Match Review: Japan vs Australia
Japan No. 8 Kazuki Himeno best summed up the view from the Brave Blossoms’ camp following their 32-23 loss to Australia on Saturday when he said “To be honest, I’m disappointed. It feels like we lost a winnable match.”
Playing in just their third test match since Rugby World Cup 2019, Jamie Joseph’s team put in a battling performance at Showa Denco Dome against the world’s No. 3 team, with the game only decided in the closing minutes.
“Big games like this can be decided by little things. We need to keep improving, and come out stronger each game,” said centre Ryoto Nakamura, one of Japan’s two try scorers.
Joseph praised his players, particularly their defence, but admitted mistakes had eventually cost them the game.
“Given this was the first game since July the players applied themselves very well. They were very motivated to perform at their best and at times we looked very good.”
He was also left to rue his side’s discipline, with the penalty count in favour of Australia and the hosts having to play 10 minutes a man down after Lomano Lava Lemeki was sent to the sin bin for a shoulder charge.
“As soon as you go to 14 men, the pressure is compounded to the rest of the team,” Joseph said. “We are simply not a team that can beat Tier One teams with 14 men on the field for 10 minutes.”
Japan captain Pieter “Lappies” Labuschagne said he was “really proud of the way we played.” But, like his coach, he admitted his team had “made a few mistakes and they capitalized and put us under pressure.”
The Wallabies never trailed after Quade Cooper, who plays his club rugby for Hanazono Kintetsu Liners, put winger Tom Wright away for the opening score in the seventh minute. But they were made to work hard for their fifth straight victory by a resilient Japan side.
Rikiya Matsuda opened Japan’s account with a penalty before the Australians increased their lead through replacement winger Jordan Petaia. Matsuda then showed he was just as accurate kicking from hand as his pin-point kick pass found Lemeki who beat a couple of defenders before touching down. Matsuda added the extras from the touchline and then kicked a penalty to make it 14-13 to the visitors before a penalty by Cooper saw the teams turn around with the Wallabies in front by four points.
That lead was stretched further early in the second half thanks to tries from Taniela Tupou and Rob Leota before Nakamura scored an intercept try to make it 27-20 with 56 minutes on the clock. A Yu Tamura penalty made it a four-point game but any chance Japan had of a famous first ever win over the Wallabies were dashed when Connal McInerney powered over in the 78th minute.
“We’re happy to win, and we’ll be better for that game,” said Australia coach Dave Rennie. ”They’re a good side. Every time we gave them a bit of a sniff, they hurt us. We got some good go forward, but we got sucked into playing more phases when they had no cover in the back field. That was disappointing, and we ended up putting ourselves under pressure because of that. We lacked a little bit of accuracy at key times, and we lacked a bit of patience. But that’s what happens.”
Australia captain Michael Hooper, who played for Toyota Verblitz during the 2021 Top League season, was impressed by the home team. “Japan have been improving really fast over the last couple of years,” he said. “Sometimes it felt today that we were able to put a lot of pressure on the Japanese side, and they were able to find solutions and get out of that and flip it straight back onto us.”
His Japan counterpart Labuschagne said the Brave Blossoms had “really wanted to make Japan proud.” “We had to defend quite a bit and it came down to the last few minutes. We want to measure ourselves against the best teams in the world so it was great to play against Australia.” Joseph said there were lots of work-ons but he was “not displeased with the performance. It shows we have a lot of room to improve and with the tour we have coming up that’s going to be very good for our future.”
Japan now head to Europe to play Ireland on Nov. 6, Portugal on Nov. 13 and Scotland on Nov. 20.