Warner Dearns to co-captain Japan against England
Warner Dearns will co-captain Japan against England at Allianz Stadium. Co-captaincy means sharing the leader's role with a team-mate, so both players speak for the side and lead it on the field.
It is a long way from where he started. Dearns moved from the North Island of New Zealand to Japan at the age of 14, when his father Grant took a job as a strength and conditioning coach, the person who plans a squad's training for power and fitness, with NEC Green Rockets. His mother Tanya, a former New Zealand netballer, gave up her coaching job to help the family settle in. BBC Sport reported those details.
He attended Kashiwa Senior High School in Japan. He qualified to play for Japan on residency grounds, which means eligibility earned by living in the country for long enough, rather than through a parent or grandparent's birthplace. He made his Japan debut in November 2021, aged 19.
Two years later he was part of the squad at the 2023 Rugby World Cup in France, and he played in all four of Japan's matches there. Those games gave him a wider stage and a reputation as a dependable presence in the side.
His route has also taken him back to New Zealand. He spent a season on sabbatical, a break from his usual commitments, with the Hurricanes, helping them win their first Super Rugby title in a decade. Super Rugby is the southern hemisphere's top club competition, and the Hurricanes are one of its New Zealand teams.
He has been open about his choice of allegiance. A switch back to New Zealand would have meant a three-year stand-down, a period in which a player cannot appear in Test matches, the full internationals, before wearing the All Blacks shirt. Dearns has said that option was never one he considered.
Away from the pitch, he now speaks Japanese fluently, and his son was born in Japan. Physically, he is 6ft 8in tall and weighs more than 19 stone, or 120.6kg. In a sport where size matters, that frame is one of the first things opponents notice.
For Japan, the captaincy job is a sign of how far he has come with the national side. For Dearns, it is a chance to lead out in one of the sport's best-known fixtures, against a team that has beaten Japan in the past. The contest against England will show what that partnership in charge can do.
