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Championship-winning coach joins Japan coaching team

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND - AUGUST 26: Daniel Bowden of Auckland (C) passes during the round two Mitre 10 Cup match between Auckland and Northland at Eden Park on August 26, 2017 in Auckland, New Zealand. (Photo by Fiona Goodall/Getty Images)

Much-travelled former Super Rugby and Premiership player Dan Bowden has announced on LinkedIn that he has landed a job on the Japan coaching staff as attack coach.

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It will be Bowden’s first international coaching job having spent five years working for Auckland RU and the last two as an assistant coach at recently crowned Japan League One champions Toshiba Brave Lupus.

Toshiba beat the Wild Knights 24-20 in last month’s thrilling final, which was watched by a crowd of 57,000 at Tokyo’s National Stadium, to win the Championship title for the first time in 14 years.

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Bowden, 38, joins Test centurions Owen Franks and Victor Matfield in assisting Eddie Jones for the upcoming match against England, which can be watched live and exclusive on RugbyPass TV, on June 22nd, the back-to-back meetings with Maori All Blacks, on June 29th and July 6th, followed by further home Tests against Georgia and Italy, on July 13th and 21st.

As a player, the fly-half/centre looked destined to play for the All Blacks. He represented New Zealand through the U19 and U21 age groups and had four seasons of Super Rugby behind him by the age of 22 – at the Blues, Highlanders and Crusaders.

His career took a different direction, though, when he joined London Irish in the English Premiership in 2010. Bowden spent two years there and a similar amount of time at Leicester before joining Bath, after a brief stopover in Japan with Yamaha and some time back at the Blues.

But Bowden’s time at Bath under the coaching of Mike Ford and then his Toshiba boss, Todd Blackadder, was marred by injury and he returned to New Zealand to play Mitre 10 rugby with Auckland until a bad concussion forced him to hang up his boots in 2018.

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On retiring, Bowden did some TV punditry work and worked in talent identification and recruitment before embarking on his coaching career.

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J
JW 14 minutes ago
'Passionate reunion of France and New Zealand shows Fabien Galthie is wrong to rest his stars'

Where? I remember saying "unders"? The LNR was formed by the FFR, if I said that in a way that meant the 'pro' side of the game didn't have an equal representation/say as the 'amateur' side (FFR remit) that was not my intent.


But also, as it is the governing body, it also has more responsibility. As long as WR looks at FFR as the running body for rugby in France, that 'power' will remain. If the LNR refuses to govern their clubs use of players to enable a request by FFR (from WR) to ensure it's players are able to compete in International rugby takes place they will simply remove their participation. If the players complain to the France's body, either of their health and safety concerns (through playing too many 'minutes' etc) or that they are not allowed to be part in matches of national interest, my understanding is action can be taken against the LNR like it could be any other body/business. I see where you're coming from now re EPCR and the shake up they gave it, yes, that wasn't meant to be a separate statement to say that FFR can threaten them with EPCR expulsion by itself, simply that it would be a strong repercussion for those teams to be removed (no one would want them after the above).


You keep bringing up these other things I cannot understand why. Again, do you think if the LNR were not acting responsibly they would be able to get away with whatever they want (the attitude of these posters saying "they pay the players")? You may deem what theyre doing currently as being irresponsible but most do not. Countries like New Zealand have not even complained about it because they've never had it different, never got things like windfall TV contracts from France, so they can't complain because theyre not missing out on anything. Sure, if the French kept doing things like withholding million dollar game payments, or causing millions of dollars of devaluation in rights, they these things I'm outlining would be taking place. That's not the case currently however, no one here really cares what the French do. It's upto them to sort themselves out if they're not happy. Now, that said, if they did make it obvious to World Rugby that they were never going to send the French side away (like they possibly did stating their intent to exclude 20 targeted players) in July, well then they would simply be given XV fixtures against tier 2 sides during that window and the FFR would need to do things like the 50/50 revenue split to get big teams visiting in Nov.

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