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Summary Eddie Jones guided the Wallabies to the 2003 World Cup final.
Japans national rugby team coach Eddie Jones brought his squad out of their comfort zone in wrestling and fencing sessions in the build-up to their four-match tour of Europe.The Australian coach, who guided the Wallabies to the 2003 World Cup final, forced the Brave Blossoms to spend an afternoon with retired Japanese mixed martial artist Tsuyoshi TK Kosaka before they left Japan last week.Japanese rugby players, like most professional sportsmen in the country, have generally only ever played the one sport while at high school and university, Jones wrote in a column for Kyodo News published Friday.They have rarely been asked to move outside their comfort zone.Jones, who took over Japan in April, added that players overseas take up a number of sports while at school to learn different skill sets that they can then apply to their rugby.As many people have pointed out over the years, we are not the biggest team in the world. So it is essential that we look for anything that can give us a competitive edge, said Jones, who aims to take Japan into the worlds top 10 by the 2015 World Cup.Wrestling has long been used by the All Blacks and Wallabies and for me, it was a no-brainer that we get the Japan team doing the same -- the idea being that the players would have a better understanding of how to change their body positionwhen coming into contact.After his 29-man squad arrived at their base in France, Jones took them to the Fencing Club at Paris University one afternoon.Fencing is a sport that utilizes speed and teaches players how to win in one-on-one situations, he said, and having dressed up in all the equipment and taken part in the warm-up, I can tell you it is a lot harder than it appears.The reaction of the players to both sessions was superb, said Jones, who was also a technical adviser to South Africas Springboks when they won the 2007 World Cup.The Japanese have always had a great capacity to learn things and the uptake of the new skills was very good.The Brave Blossoms tour kicks off with a Test match against Romania on Saturday, followed by another against Georgia aweek later. They will take on a Basque select team on November 21 and the French Barbarians four days later.Obviously we want to win all four games on the tour, Jones said.But just as important is that the players and team develop as we head towards the 2015 World Cup, and thinking outside the box and acquiring new skills is key to that.
