{"id":422158,"date":"2026-04-28T19:59:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T19:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/422158\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T19:59:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T19:59:07","slug":"irish-power-led-to-japan-fixture-switch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/422158\/","title":{"rendered":"Irish &#8216;power&#8217; led to Japan fixture switch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Japan head coach Eddie Jones has said that their Nations Championship clash with Ireland in July is being staged in Australia because Ireland &#8220;have all the power&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.podbean.com\/media\/share\/dir-99u5f-2d3a0a73\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Speaking on the Rugby Unity podcast<\/a>, the former England and Australian head coach took aim at the decision to play the scheduled clash in Newcastle.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You know why we&#8217;re playing Ireland in Newcastle? Ireland have all the power at World Rugby,&#8221; said Jones.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So we have to play our home game, that should be in Tokyo, in Australia to make sure Ireland don\u2019t have to travel too much &#8211; let\u2019s be frank about it.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have to just suck it up and that\u2019s what happens when you\u2019re not a major political power at the table.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rte.ie\/sport\/rugby\/2026\/0422\/1569612-ireland-to-play-japan-in-newcastle-australia\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The 11 July fixture <\/a>will kick off at 11am Irish time and will be Andy Farrell&#8217;s side&#8217;s second game of the new tournament at the McDonald Jones Stadiumin New South Wales.<\/p>\n<p>The Wallabies provide the opposition for their opening match on 4 July at the Allianz Stadium in Sydney.<\/p>\n<p>The Triple Crown winners&#8217; final game of the Southern Series is against New Zealand in Eden Park on 18 July.<\/p>\n<p>The inaugural Nations Championship pits the top 12 nations from the Northern and Southern Hemispheres against each other in a six-round competition.<\/p>\n<p>Ireland will host Argentina, Fiji and South Africa in November and the tournament will culminate in a &#8216;Finals Weekend&#8217; at Allianz Stadium Twickenham.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Japan head coach Eddie Jones has said that their Nations Championship clash with Ireland in July is being&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-422158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422158","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=422158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}