Having sapped a few spirits in Sapporo last Sunday England’s next objective is to put the “ko” into Kobe, Japan’s most enthusiastic rugby city. Waiting until their key pool games against Argentina and France to underline their genuine World Cup pedigree is theoretically fine but, as Wales showed against Georgia, it is never too early to catch and pass with precision and give their future opponents something to ponder.
A four-day turnaround including a hasty flight south, on the other hand, have allowed precious little time for reflection on the Tonga game and England’s plan for the USA Eagles was preordained a while ago. The objective is simple: get the job done as simply and effectively as possible before moving on to the crunchier fixtures in Tokyo which will determine the final pecking order in Pool C. While they pride themselves on their world-class beef hereabouts, Eddie Jones’s side do not want to make a meal of this particular contest.
It could well prove more awkward than some are envisaging. In past tournaments it has generally been the lower-ranked nations who have been required to back up within 96 hours of a bruising Test. This time it is the Eagles who have been enjoying the luxury of uninterrupted preparation on the island of Okinawa while England have been playing and shaking out their suitcases. A similar schedule clearly did not help Fiji against Uruguay, mentally or physically. When Gary Gold, the USA head coach, talked up Jones’s squad as having no apparent weaknesses he slyly omitted to mention he and his Eagles have been targeting this game for months.
Much work has gone in to improving their set-piece and they will be equally keen to test England physically and via their tactical kicking.
Get ahead and there are few more committed sides in terms of putting bodies on the line. England’s challenge – which partly explains the starting XV Jones has named – will involve making the most of any ball kicked their way, utilising their pace out wide and retaining possession rather better than they did against the Tongans. “The one area we really want to impress with is our attack and keeping hold of the ball,” said Joe Launchbury, one of 13 players in the matchday 23 not involved in Sapporo. Over their midweek team lunch largely consisting of the aforementioned Kobe beef, however, it might have been worth someone raising the subject of the 2007 version of this fixture in Lens when England made desperately heavy weather of beating a spirited American side and lost their then‑captain, Phil Vickery, for their big pool game against South Africa after he was banned for a trip on the Eagles centre Paul Emerick.
For Jones to lose a key player or two to a similarly out-of-the-blue incident or injury would be untimely to say the least. Nor does he want to see those currently not perceived as first-choice starters trying to throw miracle passes or veering “off script” in a bid to further their individual chances of selection against the Pumas. The USA may be ranked 13th in the world, below Georgia, but they could pose their opponents more scoreboard problems than Tonga, ranked 15th, ultimately did in Sunday’s 35-3 contest.
Gold also knows this stadium well, having coached the local Kobelco Steelers. Kobe is home to a huge port and is Japan’s leading sake-producing region, a combination which may help to explain why its residents love their rugby so much. For seven years in a row between 1989 and 1995 their team won the Top 14 title, inspired by Japan’s so-called “Mr Rugby”, Seiji Hirao, who attended Oxford University, played in three World Cup tournaments and also coached the national side.
Hirao died of cancer aged 53 in 2016 but his legacy lives on in Kobe. “It has always been a place where rugby is the predominant sport, which is not the case in most cities in Japan,” said Jones. “There are bars around the town which are dedicated to rugby which is unusual here. Most of the fans are rugby fans, not football fans or baseball fans, so it stands out in that way.”
Rugby, furthermore, played its part in rebuilding morale following the 1995 Kobe earthquake which killed almost 6,500 people but Jones’s most abiding sporting memory was a match his Japan side played here in the autumn of 2014. “We had two games against the Maori All Blacks and when we played them here we were beaten by 60 points. We didn’t deliberately go out to get beaten but we deliberately played away from our strengths to send a message to the team about how we were going to play. The next game we played, we got beaten by one point. It reinforced the point we had to play to our strengths.”
Jones, apparently, has since attempted something similar as England’s coach, with similar results. “How did it go? Not well. It doesn’t usually go well when you don’t play to your strengths, but it can be a great education for the team.” Soon enough, though, the time for experimentation and tinkering will be over. With Jack Nowell and Henry Slade seemingly on the mend, competition for places is about to intensify further from next week onwards. This is not the moment for England’s midweekers to take their eyes off the ball.
