RugbyJP.com<\/a>.
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<\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019d love to get that opportunity but for now\u00a0my focus is on the Black Rams and building something here.\u201d
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Lucas, who qualifies for Japan on residency grounds, was not named in Japan’s first squad of 2026, a 55-man group who will meet in June ahead of the start of the inaugural Nations Championship in July. <\/p>\n
The blonde livewire hopes his teammates\u2019 efforts will be rewarded with opportunities to play on the international stage.
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\u201cIf players here at the Rams keep playing consistent footy then hopefully they\u2019ll get recognised and we can get more boys in the squad.\u201d
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The Australia-born playmaker, who is third in the individual rankings for metres gained (752m) behind only Kubota Spears\u2019 Shaun Stevenson (785m) and Suntory Sungoliath\u2019s Cheslin Kolbe (864m), targeted \u2018play-off footy\u2019 when he signed with the ambitious Ricoh-run club.
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Tamagawa-based Black Rams, who survived a two-leg relegation play-off against division two side Toyota Shuttles in 2024, narrowly missed the play-off’s last season in former Crusaders centre Matson\u2019s first season in charge.
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Lucas and his colleagues such as ex-All Blacks star and 2015 World Cup winner TJ Perenara \u2013 who captains the team \u2013 and Japan star Amato Fakatava, leading points scorer Ichigo Nakakusu and vastly-experienced player-coach and ex-Australia international Paddy Ryan have helped to lead their play-off push this term.
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\u201cIt\u2019s really exciting, to be consistent this year has been the most pleasing thing, I think the belief in the group is really there.
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\u201cIn years gone by we\u2019ve been up and down (in the table), we want to be consistent and this is the first time we\u2019ve had four wins in a row in a number of years.\u201d
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Lucas reflected on a hard-fought, last-gasp win over Shizuoka who were missing their inspirational captain Kwagga Smith due to family reasons.
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\u201cThe match had everything, they have big power runners through the middle and then when you get it to the edge they have the likes of Semi (Radarada) and Malo (Tuitama). We got caught a bit in playing their game \u2013 that offload, frantic game, but I\u2019m really proud of ours boys’ efforts to stay in it and win.\u201d
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Talismanic captain Perenara, who superbly drives the team, crossed in the 79th minute for a dramatic win to maintain their impressive form at a crucial stage of the season.
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The Rams will travel to Kumagaya in round 12 on Saturday to face the inaugural League One winners Saitama Wild Knights who are currently second with 10 wins from 11 games.
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\u201cIt never gets easier,\u201d Lucas told RugbyJP with a smile.
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\u201cNext, we\u2019ve got Panasonic in Saitama so that\u2019ll be a good challenge for us to see where we\u2019re at.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Black Rams Tokyo\u2019s Japan-qualified full-back Isaac Lucas has spoken of his desire to play Test rugby as his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545758,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-545757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545757","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=545757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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