Japan turn to Backstreet Boys for inspiration
Ireland’s opponents will use an unlikely track to get pumped up, writes Tom Cary in Hamamatsu
It was an unexpected question and an even more unexpected answer. After an hour of line-and-length stuff about their World Cup experience and their hopes of matching Ireland’s forward power on Saturday, Japan’s press conference was just
drawing to a close when full-back Ryohei Yamanaka was asked a quick, supplementary question.
Did the players have a particular song they used to get themselves pumped up, ready for battle? Yamanaka considered the question. “Hai! [Yes]” he replied. “Backstreet Boys, I Want It That Way.”
It made for an incongruous mental image; Japan’s squad, shoulder to shoulder, gathered in the dressing room at Shizuoka’s Ecopa Stadium on Saturday belting out: “Am I your fire?/your one desire?/yes, I know it’s too late/ But I want it that way!”
Whether it will help them to see off the likes of Cian Healy and James Ryan remains to be seen. But one suspects Roy Keane would be unimpressed by the song choice. The Irishman, famously, was aghast on arriving at Sunderland a few years ago to find that the players enjoyed listening to Dancing Queen by Abba last
thing before leaving the dressing room. Writing in his autobiography The Second Half, Keane spat: “They were going out to play a match, men versus men, testosterone levels were high. You’ve got to hit people at pace. F---ing Dancing Queen. It worried me.” It does beg the question, what is the best “men versus men,” pro-testosterone dressing-room music?
Different teams have sworn by different songs. Former Liverpool goalkeeper Simon Mignolet revealed in the build-up to the 2018 Champions League final that God’s Plan by Drake was the last thing that captain Jordan Henderson liked to put on before the players ran out. God – and Gareth Bale – had other ideas that night.
Rio Ferdinand had his own mix-tape at Manchester United back in the day, featuring R&B stars Kanye West and Lil Wayne, while Micah Richards told Fourfourtwo once that Manchester City had flirted with Adele for a while, but admitted to finding it “a bit slow”.
Pre-match rugby songs are harder to come by. Bristol like to sing The Wurzels’ Blackbird, but usually after a win.
Japan sounded fairly bullish about their preparations yesterday. Scrum-half Yutaka Nagare said the squad felt “pretty confident” they could cause an upset similar to their epic victory over South Africa four years ago.
“Obviously, the whole public is favouring the Ireland side,” Nagare said. “We truly believe we can prove them wrong.”
If they do not, they might consider switching from I Want It That Way to “He’ll be coming round the corner, Malcolm Marx” for their next game against Samoa. The Barbarians, led by Lood de Jager, belted it out before their clash with Argentina at Twickenham last December and it did the trick. The Baa-baas went on to win 38-35. One suspects even Keane would have approved.