Tightheads & Loose Balls
● Media travelling to a Springbok press conference went on a glorious misadventure on Friday. Though the team had been staying in Nagoya in preparation for their match against Namibia, the game was scheduled for Toyota, 53km to the east.
We made Google inquiries and had found a route, but in seeking clarity about the right platform we should be using, a Japan Rail employee noticed our rail passes and gave us directions.
After 20 minutes on a high-speed train, we disembarked and walked out of the station and performed a Google search for the location of the stadium. We were aghast to find it 62km away to the northwest and it dawned on us we had been given directions to a platform for a train heading for Toyohashi and not our intended destination Toyotashi station.
● Herschel Jantjies and namesake Elton have been hitting it off.
“Funnily enough, we joke that we do homework together,” the scrumhalf said this week. “Our beds have been pushed together so that the laptop can rest in the middle. Elton and I started on a good note on my Rugby World Cup (RWC) debut.
“I would just look at Elton and I’ll know he’s not happy. Or, I would look at him and he’d give me the nod. We do a lot of stuff together. We’ve grown as friends.”
● Unsurprisingly, England coach Eddie Jones has been in fine form in front of the microphones at the RWC. Earlier this year he raised eyebrows in these parts for referring to flankers Tom Curry and Sam Underhill as “Kamikaze Kids”. After the game against Tonga, a Japanese reporter got an opportunity after to seek clarification from Jones. “They hit everything that moves.”
In the build-up to the game against the US Jones opined that the Americans would “play like 15 Donald Trumps”. Asked to explain, he said: “They’ll give everything.”
On the nose injury Owen Farrell suffered against the US, he said: “He’s missing part of his nose, which is unfortunate. But he’s married, he’s got a child and he’s not looking for any young lass in Kobe tonight; so he’ll be okay.”
● Australia coach Michael Cheika and Wales coach Warren Gatland also got in to the act on Friday. “He has a few more grey hairs than he did in the past. He thinks they make him look more distinguished. I think they just make him look older. He has that, as they say in French, je ne sais quoi”, said Cheika of the grizzled Adam AshleyCooper.
“Since he’s been captain, we don’t have as many fights at training because he used to start most of them,” said Gatland ahead of Wales captain Alun Wyn Jones’s 130th Test for Wales.
● The RWC always brings the disparities between the game’s have and have nots to the fore. This week Namibia Rugby CE Mervin Green was most displeased with the travel arrangements made for the union’s delegation to yesterday’s game in Nagoya. They were only scheduled to leave Tokyo yesterday morning and would arrive at the game around an hour or so before kickoff.