Ata glance
is fool’s gold.
This Japanese team is a combination of extraordinary circumstances. They have a great coaching team in Jamie Joseph and Tony Brown, who remind me a bit of Brian Clough and Peter Taylor, the great English football managerial duo of the seventies. They were never as good without the other. They complemented each other perfectly.
But Brown is leaving after this World Cup to hook up with the Highlanders. Defence coach Scott Hansen is going to the Crusaders. And no one is quite sure what Joseph will do at the end of his contract.
Captain Michael Leitch said after the game, ‘‘It’s all about taking your moments.’’
Japan have taken their moment and it’s been glorious
South Africa 26
(Makazole Mapimpi 2, Faf de Klerk tries; Handre Pollard conversion, 3 penalties),
(Yu
Japan 3
Tamura penalty). HT: 5-3 and beautiful and educational and humbling. But it’s just that. A moment.
The players went into camp for months ahead of this World Cup. They trained and trained and trained together. There is not a rugby side on this planet that know each other so well and can play off each other with such understanding. Not even the All Blacks.
But it was a one-off because Japan were hosts of the World Cup. It’s not going to happen again. The players will disband. Some might become part of the 2021 Super League, the crazy idea of the boss of Japanese Rugby. This team will decline.
But what World Rugby can and should learn is that if they paid Samoa and Fiji and Tonga and all the other second tier nations to go into camp for months ahead of a World Cup and brought in great coaches then anything is possible. The great weakness of the rugby powers is that they come together for such short periods of time. That’s why Japan could beat Ireland and Scotland and Joseph said so.
So when Steve Hansen wants his players out of Super Rugby for training sessions ahead of a World Cup, he is quite right. That time is precious. If Japan has shown the world anything, it is the value of unity and cohesion and time spent together. And I can just hear those wretched English clubs squealing with self interest as I write this – of course you can’t have our players, we have a mediocre product to sell.
You could see Japan’s extraordinary togetherness in the phalanx of their players, spearheaded by Leitch, all connected by a hand to the shoulder. It is symbolic of what international rugby could become. But it is a dream, like Japan winning the World Cup.
It is a fantasy that French club rugby and English club rugby have no intention of ever letting happen and World Rugby has not got the balls to stand up to them.
So we will remember all those beautiful tries that Japan have scored. We will remember the final invasion of the not so little green men from South Africa who strangled our romanticism as they had every right to do.
We will remember the Japanese trainer binding tape round the head of the bloodied Pieter Labuschagne at the game’s end and giving it a blessed kiss. We just don’t have to kid ourselves about the future. This is Japan’s World Cup. And let’s enjoy it just for that.