Eddie Jones has been grilled by an Australian journalist for allegedly having an interview with the Japanese Rugby Federation while still head coach of the Wallabies.

In France, Australia suffered their worst-ever Rugby World Cup result. For the first time ever, Jones’ team lost to Warren Gatland’s Wales 40–6, and they were eliminated from the group stage.

The Australian media relentlessly pursued the 63-year-old after the game over the rumors that he had attended an August 25 interview with the JRFU. Among the journalists that day with the guts to take the charismatic coach on was Tom Decent. Jones declared that he was “100%” dedicated to coaching Australia, even threatening to leave the press conference.

Jones left his position with Australia almost three months later and took the helm as head coach of the Brave Blossoms. At the unveiling in Tokyo, Decent from The Sydney Morning Herald fired some questions at him.

“Konnichiwa, Eddie,” he started. “Congratulations on the role. You’ve denied links to this job all year, I think more than a dozen times. Can we just clarify when you first made contact with the JRFU and do you feel the need to apologise to Wallabies fans before the World Cup?”

Jones retorted: “Well, I didn’t do a interview before the World Cup. I was asked by the recruitment agency to share my experiences with them of Japan. Some people might have construed that as an interview. It certainly wasn’t an interview.

“The first interview I had with Japan was in December, and that’s the only interview I have had.”

“As we’ve spoken about before I had a plan of what we needed to do to change Australian rugby and we weren’t able to do that, Rugby Australia weren’t able to help support that so I decided to move on. I wish Australia all the best.

“I feel terrible mate. But I don’t feel any guilt at all about this process and I know you’ve been banging the drum fairly strongly on this, but I haven’t had an interview until December.”