Executive Chair: Eddie Jones, Head coach of the Japan national rugby team

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Newstalk's Executive Chair. Thanks to Vodafone Business. With Microsoft 365 from Vodafone, your business can bring the team together, wherever they are. See Vodafone.ie forward slash business.

Bobby Kerr (0:15)

Now, it's my great pleasure to welcome to Down To Business out here in Kyoto. The great rugby legend that he is, Mr. Eddie Jones. Eddie, you're very welcome to Down To Business.

Eddie Jones (0:25)

How are you, Bobby? All right, mate?

Bobby Kerr (0:26)

I'm really good. Can I just ask you this? What's the first thing that comes into your mind when you think about Irish rugby?

Eddie Jones (0:36)

The thing that strikes me the most is how inventive they've been over the last 20 years. You know, if you go back, when I first started coaching in the National, you go in the season tour, and the Ireland game would be traditionally one of the easiest games, you know, and the last 10 years, they've been consistently in the top two in the world. You know, with a small population, that's an incredible achievement.

Bobby Kerr (0:59)

What do you make of the Lanster setup? Is it something that, as a coach, that you obviously, you know, when you're looking at the Irish setup, do you know much about how the whole Lanster thing works, and would you be... what would your level of detailed knowledge be around that?

Eddie Jones (1:18)

Well, I've got... I think I've got rudimentary knowledge, and basically, they've captured the best talent and give them the best opportunity to develop, and, you know, it's pretty smart, you know, very smart. And, you know, if you consider 80% of Lanster come from the Lanster Academy, and 80% of Ireland comes from the Lanster Academy, it's a pretty good production line.

Bobby Kerr (1:39)

Okay. Just going back to yourself, Eddie, you've got a Japanese mother, your father was Australian, you grew up in Tasmania. When did the rugby start or was it a rugby family? I know you played hooker in your early days.

Eddie Jones (1:54)

No, no, not at all, mate, but we lived, my father was in the army, so we moved around a bit. And we ended up in La Perouse in Sydney, which was a traditional rugby league area. Played rugby league till 10 And then, yeah, I was lucky, I was born in the era of fantastic players, you know, three Ella's who revolutionised Australian rugby. Mark Ella scored a try in every Grand Slam game, Captain Australia when he was 24 So then we went to rugby school and played rugby from there. So we were from the sort of the other side of the tracks, mate.

Bobby Kerr (2:26)

OK. Now we're here in Japan and this is a place you know well. This is your third, I suppose, coaching gig here. Am I right in saying once as assistant, twice as head coach?

Eddie Jones (2:38)

Yeah, no, that's correct, mate. No, I think because of my heritage, because I'm half Japanese, I've always had an attraction to coach here, you know, and I'm getting towards the end of my career, so I thought it'd be a good place to finish off and give something back to the game.

Bobby Kerr (2:52)

What about Japan as a rugby nation, Eddie? Again, we've seen flashes of real brilliance there over the last couple of years. Are they a team that can compete at the highest level?

Eddie Jones (3:07)

I think, yeah, 2015, 2009 showed that, but unlike Ireland, the success was not planned, you know, you can have situational success, I'll show you how to have it in business as well.

And they don't have the planning or the infrastructure to be sustainably successful. And that's one of the things we're trying to manipulate now because, you know, you're in Kyoto now, and you can see how strong the tradition is in Japan. In rugby, it's the same, mate. Yeah, it's very traditional.

Bobby Kerr (3:38)

And in terms of the availability of players, the lads coming through, is there a good channel of recruitment of, like, how's youth rugby and, you know, underage rugby and all that?

Eddie Jones (3:50)

Well, it's an unusual system here, mate, that nearly all the good players go to, like in Linster, go to good high schools.

And then they go to university for four years. But the university competition is not a high performance, you know, so they train 150 kids, 90 kids at one time. There might be two coaches, you know, they're not eating, they're not training like a high performance. So our best young talent from 18 to 22 are just treated like anyone else in the street. And that's the disadvantage we're trying to overcome at the moment.