Japan’s head coach, Eddie Jones, believes his team can cause further chaos at the World Cup after they pulled off the biggest shock in Test rugby history by defeating South Africa 34-32 in Brighton. His Springbok counterpart, Heyneke Meyer, has apologised to his country and labelled his side’s performance “unacceptable”.
An ecstatic Jones, who helped steer the Boks to World Cup glory as a technical consultant in 2007, was as stunned as everyone else by the outcome. “It’s a pretty humbling experience … I had to look at the score at the end to see if it was true or not. We were more than brave. That’s got to go down as one of the greatest games in World Cup history.”
He went on to compare Japan’s dramatic late winning try after a intense period of pressure to a suspense movie such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho – “It’s like the horror story. If you go into the shower at midnight you know what’s going to happen next” – and says Japan, whose only previous World Cup pool win came against Zimbabwe in 1991, will now focus on qualifying for the quarter-finals for the first time.
“We’ve made a splash today but we want to make a real dent in the tournament. We are not done. If we make the quarter-finals then I can retire from coaching. I can be like Clive Woodward and tell everyone what to do on television. Tell Sir Clive I want to be like him. That’s my dream,” referring to the man who beat his Australia side with England in the 2003 World Cup final.
Jones and his captain, Michael Leitch, revealed that they had been plotting how to beat South Africa ever since the draw was made almost three years ago. “I’ve coached for 20 years and I’ve never worked harder,” said Jones. “I’m getting too old for this. I’m 55. I should be in Barbados watching cricket. We wanted to make it a phase game and keep the ball in play. We thought a high ball-in-play time would give us a better chance of winning. The players weren’t satisfied at half-time. They wanted to win the game.”
Japan, however, now have only four days to recover before they face Scotland at Kingsholm on Wednesday. Jones is phlegmatic – “When you’re at the bottom of the food chain you accept what you get; that’s the schedule, we’ve known about it for two years” – but reckons there could be more shocks. “It’s probably thrown this whole pool open. To beat the Springboks at a World Cup is a pretty special feeling but we’ve still got Scotland around the corner. I wouldn’t fancy being Samoa next weekend when they face South Africa. It’ll be a massive bash-up festival.”
A shell-shocked Meyer conceded his side had been beaten by the better side on the day. “I have to apologise to the nation. It was just not good enough. It was unacceptable and I take full responsibility. The players feel they’ve let the country down. We have to get things on track but it’s not going to be easy. We need to be 100 times better to go through to the next round.
“I’m not going to blame the players; the coach always has to take responsibility. I still believe in these players and I still believe we can win the World Cup. But I have to press some hard buttons. You don’t play rugby on paper. It’s about how you execute and we didn’t do that at all. We just took the wrong decisions throughout and they were really up for it. If this is not a wake-up call nothing is. I think this is the toughest World Cup ever. There will be more shocks.”
The experienced Fourie du Preez, who plays his club rugby in Japan, described the result as the low point of his career and said the Springboks had been outsmarted. “I’ve been playing there for four years, so I knew what was coming. I tried to let the guys know during the week that Japan are a proper nation. They were probably just better prepared than us, they had a lot of focus areas where they targeted us. They just outsmarted us.”
