{"id":238845,"date":"2025-10-25T01:24:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T01:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/238845\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T01:24:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T01:24:10","slug":"australia-vs-japan-rugby-international-live-eddie-jones-vs-wallabies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/238845\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia vs Japan rugby international live: Eddie Jones vs Wallabies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eddie Jones said facing his native Australia brings out his \u201cextreme competitive spirit\u201d as the Japan coach plots a surprise win over his old team on Saturday in Tokyo.<\/a><\/p>\n

Jones comes up against Australia for the first time since stepping down as Wallabies coach following their disastrous 2023 Rugby World Cup campaign to begin a second stint in charge of Japan.<\/a><\/p>\n

The move sparked anger in Australia, after Jones had repeatedly denied reports that he was set to take the Japan job.<\/p>\n

The 65-year-old has led teams against Australia in the past and enjoyed a successful head-to-head record during his time as England coach from 2015 to 2022.<\/p>\n

FOLLOW THE ACTION LIVE FROM 4.50PM AEDT ON SATURDAY BELOW <\/p>\n

Jones named his team on Thursday for the game at Tokyo\u2019s National Stadium and said he was looking forward to upsetting his countrymen again.<\/p>\n

\u201cI enjoy beating Australia \u2014 I coached against them 10 times for England and beat them nine times,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlaying against you own country, there\u2019s always a certain amount of different feeling involved in it, but it just brings out the extreme competitive spirit within yourself.\u201d Australia play Japan before heading to Europe to take on England, Italy, Ireland and France on successive weekends.<\/p>\n

Coach Joe Schmidt named his team to face Japan earlier in the day, with 13 changes from the side that lost to New Zealand in the Rugby Championship.<\/p>\n

Jones said there was \u201ca winning opportunity\u201d for Japan if they can unsettle an unfamiliar Wallabies line-up.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re playing a team that has got a lot of players that are playing for a spot and they want to be the starting guys, if things don\u2019t go their way at the start of the game, they can get frustrated,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur job is to bring out that frustration. Our job is to be at them the whole time.\u201d Jones handed veteran flanker Michael Leitch his 90th cap in a line-up that mixes experience with youth.<\/p>\n

The coach said his team were planning to hit the Wallabies with \u201ca Japanese style of rugby\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe realise that it\u2019s a big task for us but we feel like we\u2019re up to it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re ready to take them on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eddie Jones said facing his native Australia brings out his \u201cextreme competitive spirit\u201d as the Japan coach plots…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[142858,64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-238845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-matchidirb20251201","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}