Home Isn’t Home If You’re Not Tier One

The game is growing. We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again, and on the surface it still feels true. New markets, new fans, new stories. Japan has been the poster child for all of that. A team and a country that didn’t just buy into the idea of global rugby, but actually made it work. Packed stadiums, genuine support, a style of play people enjoy, and moments that have etched themselves into the sport’s history. If you were designing a case study for “how to grow the game,” you’d be wise to start with Japan.

And yet here we are.

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Eddie Jones has come out swinging after it emerged that Japan have to play a “home” fixture in Australia to accommodate the Irish team and their travel schedule. A home game. In another country. Not because Japan can’t host. Not because there’s no interest. But because it’s more convenient for someone else. Never mind that Japan must now play at home one week, fly to Aus to face the Irish and then fly back home for their next game.

If that sounds backwards, that’s because it is.

Eddie, in typical fashion, didn’t dance around it. He called it what it is, an imbalance. And when you strip away the politics and the polished language, it’s hard to argue with him. Because what exactly are we saying when one of the few genuine growth markets in rugby is told to give up a home fixture so a Tier 1 nation doesn’t have to get on a long-haul flight? We’re saying that growth is conditional. We’re saying that some nations are still more equal than others. Rules for thee and not for we.

Japan has done everything that’s been asked of them and more. They didn’t just host the Rugby World Cup in 2019, they transformed it. They didn’t just compete, they captivated. They didn’t just show up, they shifted perceptions. This isn’t a nation knocking politely on the door anymore, it’s one that’s proven it belongs inside the room.

But when decisions like this get made, you start to realise that the room hasn’t actually changed all that much.

Because for all the talk about a global calendar and a Nations Championship that’s meant to grow the game, the underlying structure still leans in the same direction it always has. The traditional Northern Hemisphere powers hold the cards. The travel burdens don’t get shared equally. And when compromises are needed, they tend to come from the same side of the table.

That’s why this matters. Not because of one fixture, but because of what it represents in the grand scheme of things.

It’s easy to say rugby is expanding into new territories. It’s much harder to actually treat those territories as equals. Hosting matches, building atmosphere, giving local fans access to the game at the highest level, that’s not a bonus feature of growth, it is the growth. Take that away, even once, and you’re sending a message that those markets are still secondary. The sad thing is, we’ve seen this movie before. South Africa knows it well. Long travel, strange kick-off times, competitions structured around other people’s convenience.

So when Rassie  backs Eddie and says he’s speaking the truth, it’s not surprising. It’s recognition. Recognition of a system that still hasn’t quite figured out how to balance ambition with fairness. Because growing the game properly isn’t neat. It isn’t convenient. It requires the established nations to stretch a bit, to travel further, to give up a slice of comfort so the sport can build something bigger than its traditional footprint. If that sacrifice only ever goes one way, then what we’re really doing isn’t growing the game, we’re just managing it.

We spoke about this earlier in the year in respect of Fiji, which you can read about here.

Japan deserves better than to be treated like a logistical workaround. They’ve earned the right to host, to showcase, to build on what they’ve already created. And more than that, the global game deserves it too. Because every time a decision like this is made, it chips away at the idea that rugby is genuinely trying to evolve.

Eddie Jones didn’t create this problem. He just said it out loud. Maybe that’s what’s making people uncomfortable. Not the message itself, but the fact that it’s no longer being dressed up. The game is growing, somewhere. You can see it in Japan. You can feel it in the energy around teams that weren’t part of the old guard. But moments like this make you wonder whether the people in charge actually trust that growth enough to commit to it fully.

If they did, Japan wouldn’t be playing home games anywhere but home.