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Recap: Japan vs Ireland LIVE | Rugby World Cup
By RugbyPass
Relive all the action as Rugby World Cup hosts Japan take on Ireland in Shizuoka.
Keep up to date with the latest score, stats and join the conversation from anywhere in the world in our Live Match Centre (click here).
Ireland come into the match off the back of an encouraging demolition of Six Nations rivals Scotland, but they now have to cope with Japan’s “Ferrari” wing, hat-trick hero Kotaro Matsushima who lit up the opening night of the World Cup when the hosts saw off Russia 30-10 in Tokyo.
Japan boss Jamie Joseph quickly likened the 26-year-old to Italy’s black-horse branded sports cars, tipping the South Africa-born winger to continue to impress at the tournament.
Matsushima himself looked to downplay that comparison but had few qualms in highlighting Ireland wing Jacob Stockdale’s much-vaunted power game. Insisting it would be difficult to give himself a nickname, Matsushima said of Stockdale: “Well he’s big, so he’s like a speedy truck I would say; a two or three metric ton truck.”
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Japan have spoken at length all week about their readiness to conquer the nerves that racked their opening night performance against Russia.
The Brave Blossoms admitted to being overawed by the occasion of the curtain call on the first World Cup in Asia, with a raucous capacity crowd something they had not previously encountered.
Head coach Joseph’s men struggled under the high ball, and know they can ill afford to repeat such shortcomings against an Ireland side stacked with aerial threats.
Matsushima still believes he can bag two tries against the Irish however, in a bold prediction of bidding to extend his hot scoring streak.
“There were lots of things that didn’t go well against Russia,” said Matsushima. “There will be good chances once the ball comes out wide and I’d like to score two tries.
“Under the high ball, the first thing is to persevere. Even if we drop balls we need to maintain a strong connection among the back-three, keep our positions where each of us can help each other out and don’t give away possession easily. We need to start with the catcher doing his job first.”
WATCH: Joe Schmidt and Rory Best discuss Ireland's team selection to face Japan
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Latest Comments
BB can’t pass? Right…
Go to commentsEven the 20/30 cappers did too I reckon.
IDK, I think Jordan has a limited life span in this side unless he can develop more to his game. Like you go on to mention, I think theyres more important things to worry about than the effectiveness of someone's extra strings, or secondary components to their game.
Bash backs are Fosters thing, and to a large part they've made it work. Theyre now one of the best teams in the world.
They boy's trucked it up a bit against Italy in the redzone, and against France, wasn't that effective without the right players probably.
Try and take a look at it this way. Dissapointed Havili and Blackadder were in the side? Havili despite clearly shown that he can't do what the team needs at 12 was kept on for the RWC. Back goes down and he brings in Blackadder who doesn't play. Refuses to drop Christie when he should and look who starts this season. Beauden Barret not playing well enough to keep his 10 jersey but we gotta keep him in the side. Weve only got one 8, we stuff developing another I'll just play Ardie every game.
This years team wasn't burdened overly with injuries but they were in every position Razor might have wanted to try and development, severely limiting options. I'm not defending Razor as there was also plenty of other opportunity to make up for it and he was a little gunshy, but I'm also not going to overly criticise him because he chose cohesion over a black slate.
I think more and more people are on board with it being time to try alternatives, but then again, how would they have reacted to a loss against Italy? 😉
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