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Japan in talks to join Rugby Championship or Six Nations

Ireland v Japan – Summer Series 2021 – Aviva Stadium

The Japan Rugby Football Union is in talks with both the Six Nations and the Rugby Championship to ensure regular international games, but would prefer to be part of the southern hemisphere competition.

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Japan reached the quarter-finals of the 2019 World Cup on home soil but did not play in 2020 due to the COVID-19 outbreak, returning to action after 18 months against the British & Irish Lions in June 2021.

The Brave Blossoms won only one of their six matches last year, against Portugal.

“For our national teams to have not played for the best part of two years has had a huge impact,” former Japan international and current CEO Kensuke Iwabuchi told the JRFU website.

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“We definitely need to be involved in regular international competition, otherwise we cannot expect to maintain consistently strong sides.

“Europe has the Six Nations and the Southern Hemisphere have the Rugby Championship.

“We’re in discussions with both competitions, but while Japan is technically in the Northern Hemisphere, from a time-zone perspective we’re closer to Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific nations, so it probably makes sense to connect with their competitions.”

The Rugby Championship is contested by Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

Iwabuchi said the team can take heart from solid displays in defeats by Ireland, Australia and Scotland last year and added they hoped to build on them before the next World Cup in France.

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“I remain very optimistic regarding the Brave Blossoms and think that with two years of solid preparation ahead of France 2023 we can be in a position to achieve similar, if not better results than 2019,” Iwabuchi said.

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JW 4 hours ago
'Let's not sugarcoat it': Former All Black's urgent call to protect eligibility rules

Yep, no one knows what will happen. Thing is I think (this is me arguing a point here not a random debate with this one) they're better off trialing it now in a controlled environment than waiting to open it up in a knee jerk style reaction to a crumbling organtization and team. They can always stop it again.


The principle idea is that why would players leave just because the door is ajar?


BBBR decides to go but is not good enough to retain the jersey after doing it. NZ no longer need to do what I suggest by paying him to get back upto speed. That is solely a concept of a body that needs to do what I call pick and stick wth players. NZR can't hold onto everyone so they have to choose their BBBRs and if that player comes back from a sabbatical under par it's a priority to get him upto speed as fast as possible because half of his competition has been let go overseas because they can't hold onto them all. Changing eligibility removes that dilemma, if a BBBR isn't playing well you can be assured that someone else is (well the idea is that you can be more assured than if you only selected from domestic players).


So if someone decides they want to go overseas, they better do it with an org than is going to help improve them, otherwise theyre still basically as ineligible as if they would have been scorning a NZ Super side that would have given them the best chance to be an All Black.

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