Former England boss Eddie Jones has been fined and suspended as head coach of Japan for abusing match officials during an under-23 tour of Australia last month.

The Japanese Rugby Football Union (JRFU) says that because of the “seriousness of the matter” and the contents of their contract with Jones, the 66-year-old has been stood down from his post for six weeks and banned from having any part in the Brave Blossoms’ next four matches.

Jones will miss his team’s opening Nations Championship match against Italy on 4 July, as well as two matches against a Hong Kong China Select side and a warm-up fixture with the Maori All Blacks.

The JRFU added that it had also imposed a salary reduction on Jones.

Jones, 66, said he accepted his punishment and “deeply regretted” his behaviour.

“Some inappropriate remarks that I made caused discomfort to local match officials and other related parties,” the Australian added.

“I would like to offer my sincere apologies to everyone involved.”

Japan’s under-23 team returned from the tour with three wins from four games, including a 38-21 victory over Jones’ old Sydney club side Randwick in their final match.

It is not the first time that Jones, who oversaw the Wallabies’ pool-stage exit from the 2023 Rugby World Cup in France, has been involved in incidents on his return to his home country.

After a series-clinching win over Australia in Sydney in 2022, the then-England boss was twice involved in angry exchanges with fans calling him a “traitor”.

LOS ANGELES — Ice Cube was back in the building, but Tuesday was not a good day for the Los Angeles Dodgers. The iconic rapper’s presence at Dodger Stadium over parts of the last two seasons has usually come as part of a coronation, delivering consecutive World Series trophies to the field as the franchise has crowned a dynasty. This time, he was in the broadcast booth with SportsNet LA for the highlight of what has been a putrid week.

Shohei Ohtani hit his first home run in 52 plate appearances, snapping a spell that has gotten bad enough that manager Dave Roberts preemptively said he will sit the four-time MVP on Thursday and have his bat out of the lineup when he pitches Wednesday, too. Ohtani practically floated as he rounded the bases after taking the San Francisco Giants’ Adrian Houser deep in the third inning, asking for the baseball when he returned to the dugout.

Then the ugliness continued. A 6-2 loss to the Giants marked the Dodgers’ fourth straight, and their first time losing that many in a row by four or more runs since July 1-4, 1936. The losing goes beyond that: Tuesday was their seventh defeat in 11 games this month and 14th in their last 23 games. The club’s recent offensive ineptitude has put a strain on the rest of a talented and well-compensated roster.

“It’s just hard when the margin is thin, and right now it’s just been thin,” Roberts said.

Their lineup looks “clogged up,” hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc said this week. That remains the case even after their best player finally showed some signs of life. The Dodgers have scored three or fewer runs in 10 of their last 13 games. They managed just one hit after Ohtani’s blast. The night ended with Ohtani pulling yet another ground ball to the right side, which Giants second baseman Luis Arraez dove to secure and throw to first for the final out.

The Dodgers know this will turn. But it looks ugly right now. This has already dragged on far longer than anyone could have expected.

“You don’t want to hear that panic word when guys aren’t hitting, but I do think that there’s a standard on expectations,” Roberts said before the latest offensive dud.

This group entered Tuesday hitting .231/.316/.344 since April 21, producing at a level 10 percent below league average by wRC+. Veterans and staffers have spent recent days trying to reinforce game plans and messages to get their way out of this funk.

“I mean, no one’s freaking out or anything,” said Kyle Tucker.

The outfielder’s addition this winter was supposed to help set a floor for this lineup and insert another in-his-prime slugger to boost baseball’s oldest position player group. Instead, Tucker’s own early-season inconsistency has been just one of several troubling storylines for the Dodgers’ stars.

Ohtani is one of them. The designated hitter, who did not speak to reporters Tuesday, had gone 52 plate appearances and 11 games between home runs before he connected for his solo shot. Getting Ohtani going could free some of the Dodgers’ hitters up. That wasn’t the case Tuesday, but it was a start.

A sweet swing from Shohei Ohtani 🙌 pic.twitter.com/8rh7fWpD8A

— MLB (@MLB) May 13, 2026

The Dodgers have struggled to generate chances. The ones they have created, they’ve squandered. Ohtani led the game off with a ground single through the right side. Freddie Freeman followed two batters later with a single. When Tucker got hit by a pitch to load the bases, the Dodgers had an opportunity to score in the first inning for just the second time in 13 games.

They did push a run across, but left some meat on the bone. Will Smith smoked a sinker at the knees out to right field. The ball looked destined for the gap before Giants right fielder Jung Hoo Lee ran back 63 feet to track it down and keep Smith to a sacrifice fly before Max Muncy popped out to end the inning.

They loaded the bases down by four runs in the eighth, bringing up their two hottest hitters in Muncy and Andy Pages. Muncy struck out looking on a fastball that might have warranted an ABS challenge, and Pages hooked a ball off the end of his bat that Giants left fielder Heliot Ramos ran down to end the frame.

“Certain things like that can really turn a game around,” Tucker said. “But we just haven’t really capitalized on that much lately. So we just need to do a little bit better job at that, just kind of all the way around.”

It’s not the biggest sample, but the Dodgers have come to the plate 46 times this season with the bases loaded and scored 28 runs, which ranks in the bottom half of the league. Their .216 batting average in those spots was 25th in the majors entering Tuesday’s game, and only went down.

“When you’re really not slugging, or you’re not throwing out double-digit hits a night, then the opportunities are few and far between,” Roberts said. “And so that’s where it’s like, our margins, even on the offensive side, are just more finite.”

It does not help that the Giants, owners of baseball’s worst offense at 3.39 runs per game, have made scoring runs look so easy. Yoshinobu Yamamoto surrendered five runs, including three solo shots, to the bottom of a makeshift San Francisco lineup.

All of them were the result of Yamamoto uncharacteristically missing locations. He didn’t have margin for error, even against a team that entered the day having hit the second-fewest home runs in the majors (27).

“It was easy for (the homers) to happen,” Yamamoto said through interpreter Yoshihiro Sonoda.

Two of those homers came from Eric Haase, the Giants’ backup catcher and No. 9 hitter, who matched his 2025 total in one game against last year’s World Series MVP.

With the Dodgers swinging the bats the way they are lately and things like that happen, it’s hard to have a good day.

Wales scrum-half Keira Bevan says “nobody is more frustrated and disappointed than us” after nine consecutive losses in the Women’s Six Nations.

The latest defeat by Ireland leaves them needing a win over Italy on Sunday (12:15 BST) to avoid a third consecutive Wooden Spoon, but even that might not be enough if Scotland claim a bonus point in Dublin.

Bevan says she “completely gets” the criticism aimed at the team, who have fallen to 12th in the world rankings, but urges fans to show patience.

“Yes, we probably haven’t had the wins we want, but we are performing and getting better every game,” she said.

“It’s such a cliche, but stick with it because it’s going to come and hopefully soon.”