{"id":102792,"date":"2025-08-30T08:56:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T08:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/102792\/"},"modified":"2025-08-30T08:56:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T08:56:14","slug":"eddie-jones-plan-to-turn-warner-dearns-into-the-best-lock-in-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/102792\/","title":{"rendered":"Eddie Jones’ plan to turn Warner Dearns into the best lock in the world"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Warner Dearns, 23, will become the Brave Blossoms\u2019 youngest-ever captain when he leads the team out against Canada<\/a> in Sendai this Saturday.<\/p>\n

With longstanding leader Michael Leitch<\/a> unavailable due to personal reasons, New Zealand-born Dearns and hooker Mamoru Harada<\/a>, who have 35 caps between them, have been chosen to share the captaincy during the Asahi Super Dry Pacific Nations Cup.<\/p>\n

However, Harada has not been passed fit for Japan\u2019s opening fixture, so Dearns, who wins his 24th cap, will have the honour all to himself.<\/p>\n

With nearly a dozen players unavailable, Japan will field a callow team in their opening match. Of the 23 players selected, eight have fewer than 10 caps, so it\u2019ll be a real test of Dearns\u2019 leadership credentials.<\/p>\n

Charlie Lawrence makes his debut at inside centre, while Kenji Sato<\/a>, Kenta Kobayashi<\/a> and Yuya Hirose<\/a> are in line for their first caps after being named on the bench.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Head-to-Head <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Last 2 Meetings<\/p>\n

Average Points scored<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Head coach Eddie Jones hopes that the responsibility bestowed on Dearns will bring the best out of him and help turn him into the best lock in the world.<\/p>\n

Commenting on his selection of Dearns and Harada as co-captains, Jones said: \u201cA strong recommendation came from Michael Leitch<\/a>, which I took pretty seriously. Michael is the most influential person in Japanese rugby and has been since before 2015. He was quite adamant that these two boys both have the potential to do it well.<\/p>\n

\u201cWarner is a young guy and he\u2019s still trying to find the best of himself and sometimes responsibility helps bring that out. We want him to be the best lock in the world and believe he\u2019s capable of doing that. The players like playing with him, they respect him a lot and he\u2019s got a good relationship with Harada.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve got different strengths. Warner\u2019s strengths are more on the field, whereas Harada\u2019s strength is in leadership, particularly off the field in terms of the culture and behaviour of the team, so together they\u2019re a really good combination.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the opening match against Canada, Japan will then travel to California for their second Pool B fixture against the USA<\/a> at Heart Health Park in Sacramento on Saturday, September 6.<\/p>\n

Jones added: \u201cLast year we were runners-up, and this year our target is to go one better.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve picked a strong squad, considering we have 11 players unavailable through injury or personal circumstances. We feel confident we have a squad that\u2019s going to make Japan<\/a> proud.\u201d<\/p>\n

JAPAN team vs Canada, Saturday, August 30<\/p>\n

1 Sena Kimura<\/a>, 2 Hayate Era<\/a>, 3 Shuhei Takeuchi; 4 Waisake Raratubua, 5 Warner Dearns<\/a> (capt.), 6 Ben Gunter<\/a>, 7 Kanji Shimokawa<\/a>, 8 Amato Fakatava; 9 Shinobu Fujiwara<\/a>, 10 Seungsin Lee; 11 Malo Tuitama<\/a>, 12 Charlie Lawrence<\/a>, 13 Dylan Riley<\/a>, 14 Kippei Ishida; 15 Sam Greene<\/p>\n

Replacements: 16 Kenji Sato, 17 Kenta Kobayashi<\/a>, 18 Keijiro Tamefusa<\/a>, 19 Tiennan Costley<\/a>, 20 Faulua Makisi, 21 Kenta Fukuda<\/a>, 22 Yuya Hirose<\/a>, 23 Tomoki Osada<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Warner Dearns, 23, will become the Brave Blossoms\u2019 youngest-ever captain when he leads the team out against Canada…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102793,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-102792","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}