JRLO Chief Operating Officer Hajime Shoji – Player Classifications, Development Tournaments and Success of the JRLO

JRLO Chief Operating Officer Hajime Shoji spoke to us about the new player classification changes announced and clarified what they will actually mean. He also expanded on the newly announced JRLO development tournament and his positive takeaways from the season, which saw more than 50,000 watch the final in Tokyo last weekend.

Player Classification Rules JRLO 2026-2027

Japan Rugby League One announced changes on 13th May 2025 to the player category registration classifications, and Hajime Shoji explained, “The basic idea for this change is to enhance the motivation of the homegrown, younger players to play, while keeping an openness to international players. We believe this is very important for the sustainable growth of Japanese rugby with the increased number of local players and also the more opportunities for their long-term development.”

The JRLO provided us with some key datasets which show the impact. The league still wants to attract international talent to come and play in Japan. He explained that they are encouraged by continued interest in top-quality foreign players to play in the JRLO and showed via the statistics (if the same criteria were overlaid on players from the start of the JRLO in 2022, compared to 2025) what the changes have been.

“As you said, the change at this time is not a massive change. There might be some minimal impact on international players, which is to be expected, but we are trying to build a balance between the openness of diversity and sustainability with the homegrown players,” added Hajime Shoji.

Resetting the balance in favour of Japanese players, and striking that right balance is key.

The COO explained, “We are setting some additional rules for relief in the status or some specific special treatment for some specific players, like capped players in the national team and contributions such as to the Sevens national team. We have listened to some of the feedback from the fans, too, and we have to consider World Rugby rules on eligibility, where nationality is not considered for the eligibility of the national team.”

You can read a more expanded interview in this in our collab piece with All Things Rugby.

Since the final of the JRLO was played and won by Toshiba Brave Lupus Tokyo, players such as Malcolm Marx, Bernard Foley and Shaun Stevenson have all been confirmed for next season for losing finalists Kubota Spears Funabashi Tokyo-Bay, while Brave Lupus will still have the services of Richie Mo’anga and Shannon Frizell. 

In addition, the Brave Lupus have announced that both Warner Dearns and Mamoru Harada will be on what appears to be a one-year sabbatical next season, and both could be playing Super Rugby with Dearns linked to the Hurricanes and Harada with the Moana Pasifika.

New JRLO Development Tournament

JRLO Chief Operating Officer Hajime Shoji

At the same time as the announcements for the eligibility rules, a new tournament was introduced, which will run from September to October 2025 and provide more opportunities to players who didn’t have much game time during the regular season. We are a fan of ensuring these players still play at a competitive level and asked the COO to expand on the idea behind this.

Hajime Shoji said, “The objective of this new tournament is to encourage the growth of the young players in the League, those who didn’t have much opportunity to participate in the regular season. They will mostly be young players, and this year they will each have just two games for each club for this tournament, and no champions. 

We saw lots of demand for this to try to set up more opportunities for the younger generation, and it is very important for the growth of JRLO. This is not the perfect solution, but we are gradually increasing and developing this tournament and trying to set up more games and increase the development. That’s our plan, and this is a first step in that development.”

We asked him if we could expect this to become an annual event. “It’s very important to establish some scheme internally, but we are still discussing establishing whether this will be a regular tournament and even looking at the opportunities of inviting international teams to participate in the future.”

JRLO 2024/2025  – Positive Takeaways

Photo Credit – JRLO – Final 2025

Finally, we asked Hajime Shoji, as we head into the final stages of this 2024/2025 season, how successful he felt the JRLO had been this past year and what positives he would take away.

“I think there are lots of positive things we can observe, especially at the competitive level. It’s been very close and has become more exciting. This is our fourth season, and the fourth championship final will be between Toshiba Brave Lupus, who play Kubota Spears. In all four seasons, we had different teams in the final, so from the fans’ perspective, this is very exciting, and from the team perspective, it has been more challenging and makes them more aspirational. 

The number of fans at the stadiums may not show big growth, but hopefully this season, in total, we will see overall growth in the numbers attending the games.”

Japanese Rugby News 2025

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• New JRLO Player Eligibility Rules For 2026/2027 Season – What Do They Actually Mean?
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