Jones praises forwards after win over Samoa

MILTON KEYNES, England (Oct. 4) – Japan coach Eddie Jones praised the Brave Blossoms following the 26-5 win over Samoa at the Rugby World Cup, saying their performance had laid the foundations for the win.

“Our forwards were fantastic today,” he said. “We shut Samoa out of the game with some set-piece dominance and our work in defence round the ruck was first class. We managed to get the 20-0 lead at halftime and it was always going to be difficult for Samoa to catch us up.”

Jones said much of the credit needed to go to scrum coach Marc dal Maso and forwards coach Steve Borthwick.

“(Steve’s) attention to detail is incredible. He has got the guys to believe that height is not a major factor in the lineout. Our tallest lock is 6ft 4in, we are a very small team but we beat teams with our speed and movement, and Borthwick has been a driving force in that.”

Asked what impact the team’s success has had back home in Japan, Jones said: “If you look at the history of Japanese rugby, we had won one World Cup game in 24 years. We have just doubled that. We have changed the history of rugby in Japan.”

“Twenty million people watched the game against Scotland, they even opened the ground for the fans to watch (the Samoa game) back home. Five years ago there would be 4,000 people in there to watch us and now they are opening the stadium when we are not even there. That’s a pretty considerable change.”

Captain Michael Leitch said “Maintaining pressure was the main reason for our win. From the start we used our attack and defence to keep them under pressure.”

“We didn’t play our best game but our option taking was good. When they had two in the bin we should have played it a little bit wider but instead we went up the middle. There are just a few things we need to sharpen up.”

Ayumu Goromaru once again caught the eye with 16 points and he said the team were happy to play the way they wanted.

“We were able to show what we’ve been working on the past week. We went over a number of scenarios and that had us ready. We considered ourselves the challengers here and we were expecting it to be a much tougher game.”

“We were under the spotlight after the South Africa game but turned in a lacklustre performance against Scotland. Today, we were able to show what we’re made of.”