I played with Tony Brown at the Highlanders and watching Japan’s stunning victory against Ireland I could see the extent of the influence he has as Jamie Joseph’s assistant. In fact, I see so much about this Japan side that is similar to how the Highlanders played when they won the Super Rugby title in 2015 under Joseph and Brown.
Tony has an ability to give players the confidence to play what they see, the courage to act on the pictures that are good, whether that’s run pictures, kick pictures or offload pictures. It can look effortless on the pitch but so much work goes into perfecting it in training. I’m sure they make a lot of mistakes in training and it makes you want to pull your hair out but you see that when it transfers into games it cause opponents a lot of problems.
Whether it was going down the short side or little attacking kicks over the top, it was the variety that made life so difficult for Ireland. Andy Farrell has created one of the world’s best defensive sides but Ireland had a lot of trouble getting their usual line speed and that is a credit to the Japan coaches. Ireland were just not able to cut down Japan’s time and space as the game wore on. Fitness was a big factor, too. Towards the end of the match it was Japan who were on top, looking like they would close the game out, save for a few nervy moments at the end.
Going back to the comparison with the Highlanders of a few years ago, the similarities I see are a lot of moving the point of the attack, not just playing round the corner with forwards, as you see from England, because Japan simply don’t have that in their locker. They’ve got electric, quick-footed, explosive players and they need to maximise that threat. They are not going to bash down a side with absolute physicality, they have to move them around and Tony knows that. So you see little trick starter-plays off lineouts, they are very innovative off scrums, they’ll go wide a lot, often putting their back row wide to fill the field. A two-four-two type play, or a one-three-one and they get guys like Michael Leitch and Kazuki Himeno heavily involved in the wide channels.
You also have to look at how Japan are almost always trying to keep the ball on the field. They want the ball in play time to be as high as possible. Eddie Jones said during the Six Nations that after a visit from the Japan coaches they had said that they were aiming for the ball in play time to be nearly 50 minutes. That’s incredibly high – in the Premiership it is somewhere around 40-42 minutes. But again it’s about utilising their strengths.
They do not have the tools in their tool‑belts to be a set-piece team. If a game becomes set-piece-oriented then Japan will be worn down. I thought that was how Ireland would set about things after their fast start but, without the direction from Johnny Sexton, Japan made sure they didn’t allow them to. It was hugely impressive because not only does the skill level have to be extremely high but the players need to be able to execute under the utmost pressure and the utmost fatigue.
The thing that pleased me the most about Japan’s performance was that they did not go into their shells, or start to think that they had to change the way they were playing. It was a fast start by Ireland, Japan would have been expecting that, and then Yu Tamura missed a straightforward shot at goal. But there was some real mental resilience and that goes back to 2015. They beat the Springboks but all of a sudden Jones, their then coach, moves on and it would have been very easy for Japan to take a backwards step. It might have even looked from a distance as if they had. But Jamie and Tony had to implement their philosophy and had to find out what their players’ limits were. How hard could they be pushed in terms of fitness, in terms of mental pressure – how can they be prepared for those last 10 minutes when they’re closing the game out against a team such as Ireland. That takes a lot of work on the training field and time to come to fruition.
Equally impressive was their ruck speed – they were absolutely brutal at the breakdown and so solid defensively. They did not allow Ireland to execute their plan A and as a lot of teams suspect, if you do that you can expose the fact that they don’t really have a plan B. The Japan defence feasted on one-out running with Ireland playing around the corner off nine. Jack Carty tried to play a little bit wider but with slow ball it is very hard to do that.
Now Japan must back it up against Samoa. I remember Steve Hansen talking about how hard it is emotionally to go from one great performance to another one. That’s where the All Blacks are so good because if it’s not a great performance second time around, it’s a very good performance. The lesser teams struggle with that because it can be so emotionally draining. That is where we saw Uruguay fall down.
It took so much out of Uruguay beating Fiji and then Georgia steamrollered them. Japan have now got to be wary of that. Jamie needs to juggle his squad, be aware of who can back up and who can’t, but they have put themselves in the best possible position to reach the quarter-finals.
