Jones says team needs to keep improving

DUBAI (May 11) – Japan coach Eddie Jones said he was pleased following his side’s final game in this year’s HSBC Asian 5 Nations, but admitted there was still plenty of work to do.

“I am very happy,” he said following the 93-3 win over the United Arab Emirates. “We have improved since last year in terms of our physicality and the players have a better understanding of how we want them to play. But there is still a long way to go. There is a quantum leap between this and the likes of Tonga and Wales. But we can only do what we can do, so we’ll keep heading in that direction.”

Jones praised the effort of the hosts saying they had made Japan work hard at the breakdown. But he admitted the level of rugby played in the A5N made it difficult to judge just how his team is performing.

“I don’t want to be disrespectful to the UAE but it was pretty low level today,” he said. “We can’t take too much from it as we weren’t really tested. There is still a lot to work on in training.”

One area that Jones said wasn’t so good on Friday evening was at halfback.

“Our combinations were not sharp and our 9 and 10 were quite unsteady,” he explained.

Meanwhile, captain Takashi Kikutani admitted he was surprised to discover he was now the third highest Japanese try scorer in international rugby.

Kikutani touched down three times to move ahead of Terunori Masuho with 31 five-pointers from 57 tests. His mark is a world record for tries by a forward in international rugby.

“I never knew that,” he said after the game. “I was very surprised to hear it. But I think trying to get any higher is going to be difficult.”

Daisuke Ohata holds the record for most international tries with 69 from 58 tests, while Hirotoki Onozawa has 55 from 78 games, after scoring one of Japan’s 15 five-pointers on Friday evening.