When Japan lost to New Zealand 145-17 in the 1995 World Cup in Bloemfontein, their then manager Shiggy Konno reflected that by the time his team came to terms with such defeats and made adjustments, the game had moved on; always chasing, never catching up.
If there is one hope after the greatest upset in international rugby last Saturday in Brighton, it is that the chase turns and Japan become the pursued. South Africa had only ever lost four matches in the World Cup and just one in the pool stage before the Brave Blossoms shook them from the tree in what was a victory for the game of rugby union.
A few hours later at Twickenham, France and Italy produced a miasma of a match, all penalties and bruising charges; don’t think, feel. Rugby at the top level, so coaches have said for a considerable while, is all about winning the collisions. Japan did not against South Africa, conceding two tries through poor first-up tackles, but they shattered orthodox thinking by winning the game.
It was more than a triumph of small over big. It showed what was still possible in a sport in which the pitch has seemed to shrink, offering little in the way of space. Japan’s attacking strategy did not rely on missed tackles but getting the ball wide quickly. It may have been a tactic based on necessity, but the skills of their backs contrasted with the laboured moves over the weekend of teams far ahead of them in the world rankings. To watch Wales the following day struggle to make anything of abundant possession against a Uruguay team made up largely of amateurs was to despair for a country that once survived on instinct.
South Africa were faced with something they were not used to, opponents looking for space, comfortable moving the ball and ran at angles, like a boxer moving around the ring and exploiting every part of it rather than staying in the middle and slugging it out. They assumed, and they were far from alone, that they would be able to wear down Japan and bully them into submission. Every time they thought they had pulled away, the chasers this time caught up and moved ahead at the very end.
It has been a miserable year for South Africa, beaten by Ireland and Wales last autumn and whitewashed in the Rugby Championship where they let leads against Australia and New Zealand slip in the final minutes. It was not so much age that caught up with them against Japan but old ways. When Heyneke Meyer took over as head coach from Peter de Villiers after the 2011 World Cup, he initially embraced more of a 15-man game and he encouraged variety, but as this year’s tournament loomed, he turned back time, exhuming Bakkies Botha and Victor Matfield.
It may still be enough. Unless South Africa bump into Japan again, they will come up against the expected for the rest of the tournament, starting with Samoa this weekend in what will be a day of collisions. England recovered from losing 36-0 in the group stage to South Africa in 2007 to reach the final, when they played the same opponents in what was a far closer contest, while France made the 2011 final after losing two pool matches, including to Tonga, but going down to a tier two nation that had only once beaten a tier one side, Wales’s reserves in 2013, is not just humiliating but degrading for a country that has the second best success rate in the history of the international game after New Zealand.
The Japan head coach, Eddie Jones, knows the South African psyche well having been part of the team’s management in 2007. They won that tournament through their defence, admitting at the time that it was all about producing winning rugby. Four years earlier, he had guided Australia to the final against England when, with less power up front, he evolved a phase game based on recycling possession until a hole opened up.
Japan’s victory happened by design. Faced with South Africa and Scotland in five days, Jones was expected to keep players back for the second game, but as an assiduous student of the sport who would have watched every minute of every match South Africa had played in the Meyer era more than once, he sensed an opportunity. His players may have been at a disadvantage in terms of size, but in the former England captain Steve Borthwick they had a shrewd set-piece coach and they dominated in terms of possession and territory in the second half, the point when they were expected to fall apart.
They were fortunate in the choice of referee. What the opening weekend showed was that there remains a profound difference in the way the breakdown is refereed in the hemispheres. The Frenchman Jérôme Garcès was in charge in Brighton and he allowed a contest at the breakdown beyond the moment the tackled player was taken to ground. In contrast, the South African Craig Joubert was hard on defenders at Twickenham. The game flowed on the south coast, and as Japan flew South Africa blew.
Will what happened in Brighton fade into a dream (five days later the referee John Lacey kept his whistle close to his mouth as Scotland overcame Japan in the second half)? Jones said after the victory over South Africa, which was fittingly achieved through a try after Japan had twice turned down a kickable penalty that would have drawn the match, that he felt rugby was going in a dangerous direction. “Players are getting bigger, stronger and faster and the field is staying the same size. The problem is the power is there the whole game; something needs to be done to make it more fatiguing.”
The major European teams spent most of the summer labouring in camps to build up the endurance of players. On the evidence of last weekend, not much time was wasted on skills. The ball is likely to hang high in the air often at Twickenham on Saturday, the frenzy of the final day of last season’s Six Nations forgotten. It is about collisions and impact, not risk, but whatever Japan go on to achieve this tournament, they have shown that there is another way, one that in the words of Shakespeare stamps “the seal of time in aged things, to wake the morn and sentinel the night.”
• This is an extract taken from the Breakdown, the Guardian’s weekly rugby union email. To subscribe, just visit this page, find ‘The Breakdown’ and follow the instructions.
