Japan coach Eddie Jones said his young team must learn to keep their focus for 90 minutes but should not become despondent after collapsing in the second half against Australia on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The visitors went to the break trailing just 21-17 after an even first half in Townsville but then leaked 35 unanswered points to crash 56-17 after the hosts stepped on the gas.<\/p>\n
It followed a narrow 35-32 defeat against Les Kiss\u2019s team in Osaka last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe showed we can do it for 40 minutes. You know, we\u2019ve played two good halves of rugby against Australia (over two Tests), we\u2019ve got blown away in the second half,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey won the air, won the breakdown. We weren\u2019t good enough to defend our errors. Congratulations to Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the heavy loss, Jones said it was all part of the learning experience for his mostly inexperienced side, with 10 players fielded in Townsville having fewer than 10 caps.<\/p>\n
Two of those in the starting line-up \u2014 winger Yoshitaka Yazaki and fly-half Ryunosuke Ito \u2014 were university students.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a great experience today, albeit quite a difficult experience. But sometimes the most difficult experiences are the best experiences,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got boys today that are amateur players. They\u2019ve got to go back to university probably next week, probably Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey train with 150 players, one coach, one physio. Wouldn\u2019t happen anywhere else in the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, yeah, when you put all of that together and the experience they\u2019ve picked up, it\u2019s a great learning experience for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Japan captain Warner Dearns was similarly not worried by the size of the defeat, as the side builds towards the World Cup in Australia next year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think giving our younger guys experience like this before the World Cup, it sets us up really well for having good depth going into the World Cup,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe boys are obviously still learning Test match level footy, and it\u2019s a bit of a challenge sometimes. But they\u2019re having a lot of fun, and we\u2019re having a lot of fun playing with them.\u201d – AFP<\/p>\n
The Herald<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Japan coach Eddie Jones said his young team must learn to keep their focus for 90 minutes but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17086,8,17438,48340,48339,33,48341,48345,48343,48346,48342,48344],"class_list":["post-75065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-eddie-jones","tag-japan","tag-japan-rugby","tag-japan-rugby-team","tag-japan-vs-australia-rugby","tag-nihon","tag-rugby-learning-experience","tag-rugby-match-analysis","tag-rugby-world-cup-preparation","tag-test-rugby","tag-warner-dearns","tag-young-rugby-players"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}