Little time to reflect for Japan strength coach Simon Jones

Southlander Simon Jones was part of rugby history in Japan earlier this year and now he’s back in New Zealand to help an unheralded Highlanders team prepare for the 2020 Super Rugby season. 

Jones was widely acclaimed for his strength and conditioning role with the Japanese Brave Blossoms at the Rugby World Cup in September and October, helping transform the Tier 2 nation into a team with the power and endurance to make it to the quarter-finals for the first time, and a new world ranking of sixth. 

It was a career highlight for the former teenage sprint star, who has previously worked for the Southland Stags, Academy Southland, High Performance Sport NZ, Southern Steel and New Zealand under 21 netball team. 

In Japan, Jones was part of an all New Zealand management team which included fellow Southlander and physiotherapist Karl McDonald, head coach Jamie Joseph and his assistants Tony Brown and Scott Hansen. 

After spending three years in Japan following his recruitment by Joseph in 2016, Jones is rightly proud of what was accomplished by the management and playing group. 

“You can still see the effect that it’s having in Japan on social media, I think there’s even a street parade coming up in December,” Jones said. 

“You can see how much it means to the country and that’s what we wanted to achieve, to play a brand of rugby that inspired people, especially the Japanese people. It was a great experience, both off and on the pitch, experiencing Japan as a culture and a country, and the growth of the team. It was an awesome way to finish.” 

It wasn’t always like that. 

In Jones’ first year in Japan, success must have felt a long way off. With his family remaining in New Zealand, he would go months without seeing wife Jess or baby daughter Phoebe (now four), with second daughter Willow joining the clan just over two years ago. 

And with the competing interests of the Sunwolves Super Rugby team, the Japanese Top League and the national side, it was difficult to make headway with the development of players. 

“When the family came over, that was great. My wife did a mammoth effort in getting home set up for the kids and that culminated in them having some really great experiences. Wee Phoebe is reasonably fluent in Japanese at four, which is pretty cool.” 

Jones was tasked with helping fulfil Joseph’s vision over a three-year period of having the best movers, and the most resilient team at the Rugby World Cup. 

“Sitting with Jamie, Tony and later Scott Hansen – they make the game plan and then I’ve got to give them the team that can execute that. What was quite exciting is that we were quite aligned, and it became really easy because everything was rugby related and the players could see the why. They knew the sort of rugby we were trying to execute and understood just how hard they would have to work to achieve that.” 

Work ethic was never going to be an issue for the Japanese players, but encouraging them to train at a higher intensity than they had ever experienced would be Jones’ great challenge. 

“We did a lot of high volume running, and I don’t mean shuttles, it was during our actual rugby sessions. We based a lot of it on rugby metrics – what were the longest phases of rugby, how long is the ball in play normally, what do we need to do to play at a speed that was above the norm. We targeted the higher end of all those levels and trained above that, probably for longer than other teams.” 

Along with a best-ever showing at their home Rugby World Cup as a goal, and more time than most teams to prepare, Japan had a number of advantages to exploit. They were also lucky with injuries, but their resilience had nothing to do with chance. 

Since packing up the family and setting up again in Dunedin, there’s been precious little time for Jones to reflect before launching into the next campaign with a Highlanders team which will feature a number of new faces following significant turnover in the offseason. 

“We want to see how well we can grow what is a young squad of guys. Azza (Aaron Mauger) and Brownie (Tony Brown) are putting together quite an exciting game plan.”