{"id":412380,"date":"2026-04-22T21:24:44","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T21:24:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/412380\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T21:24:44","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T21:24:44","slug":"ireland-to-play-japan-in-newcastle-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/412380\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland to play Japan in Newcastle, Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ireland’s Nations Championship clash against Japan will take place at the McDonald Jones Stadium in Newcastle, Australia on 11 July, it has been confirmed.<\/p>\n

Kicking off at 11am Irish time, it will be Andy Farrell’s side’s second game of the new tournament at the 33,000 capacity venue in New South Wales.<\/p>\n

The Wallabies provide the opposition for their opening match on 4 July with that game already confirmed for the Allianz Stadium, Sydney.<\/p>\n

The Triple Crown winners’ final game of the Southern Series is against New Zealand in Eden Park on 18 July.<\/p>\n

The inaugural Nations Championship<\/a> pits the top 12 nations from the Northern and Southern Hemispheres in a six-round competition.<\/p>\n

\"Nations<\/p>\n

Ireland will host Argentina, Fiji and South Africa in November and the tournament will culminate in a ‘Finals Weekend’ at Allianz Stadium Twickenham.<\/p>\n

IRFU President John O’Driscoll said: “We are hugely excited to face Japan in what will be our second game of the forthcoming Nations Championship.<\/p>\n

“We faced each other last November and this will be our 12th meeting against the Cherry Blossoms.<\/p>\n

“There\u2019s enormous respect and familiarity between the two unions.<\/p>\n

“Every game is played in a positive manner and I expect the July encounter to be no different coming, as it does, in the unique setting of McDonald Jones Stadium in Newcastle.”<\/p>\n

Listen to the RT\u00c9 Rugby podcast on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts<\/a>, and email us at sportpodcasts@rte.ie<\/p>\n

\n

Follow our live blog on Munster v Ulster in the URC on Saturday from 5.30pm on RT\u00c9.ie\/sport and RT\u00c9 News app and listen to Saturday Sport on RT\u00c9 Radio 1<\/p>\n

Follow our live blog on France v Ireland in the Women’s Six Nations on Saturday from 8.10pm on RT\u00c9.ie\/sport and RT\u00c9 News app and listen to Saturday Sport on RT\u00c9 Radio 1<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland’s Nations Championship clash against Japan will take place at the McDonald Jones Stadium in Newcastle, Australia on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-412380","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}