{"id":782743,"date":"2026-07-06T13:57:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T13:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/782743\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T13:57:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T13:57:13","slug":"nations-championship-robert-baloucoune-to-have-fitness-assessed-before-japan-match","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/782743\/","title":{"rendered":"Nations Championship: Robert Baloucoune to have fitness assessed before Japan match"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Irish Rugby Football Union [IRFU] says a decision on Robert Baloucoune&#8217;s fitness will be made later this week before Ireland&#8217;s Nations Championship match against Japan on Saturday (11:10 BST).<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The winger was due to start Ireland&#8217;s opening game against Australia in Sydney but was withdrawn due to a hamstring injury.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Andy Farrell&#8217;s side will aim to build on their narrow<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/rugby-union\/articles\/cevlpz2zkneo\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> 33-31 victory over the Wallabies<\/a> when they face Japan in Newcastle.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Munster prop Jeremy Loughman will not feature in the squad due to concussion, while there are no further injury concerns.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Japan opened their Nations Championship campaign with a victory over Italy in Tokyo and sit joint third with Ireland in the Conference table.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Eddie Jones&#8217; side have won their past two matches with Ireland unbeaten in their past six games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Irish Rugby Football Union [IRFU] says a decision on Robert Baloucoune&#8217;s fitness will be made later this&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":782744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-782743","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\/782743","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=782743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/782744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=782743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=782743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=782743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}