Shota Horie: The shy Japanese icon chasing fairytale ending

Shota Horie won’t need any introduction to the massive crowd at Sunday’s Japan Rugby League One final between Saitama Panasonic Wild Knights and Toshiba Brave Lupus Tokyo.

The 38-year-old hooker, an icon of the Japanese game, is revered everywhere he has been around the world, which is quite an achievement, given he doesn’t speak a lot of English and is a shy man by nature.

That hasn’t mattered as Horie, distinguishable by his trademark dreadlocks, has built up a global network of friends during his club and test wanderings.

The 76-test veteran was a lamplighter for his countrymen playing overseas during the professional era, enjoying stints with Otago in New Zealand as well as the Melbourne Rebels in Australia and Japan’s own ill-fated Super Rugby team, the Sunwolves.

Then, of course, is his career in Japan, through 14-years with the Brave Blossoms, which saw him attend four Rugby World Cups.

He has also played over 200 club games, winning six titles with the Wild Knights.

Horie was a key part of the Brave Blossoms teams that shocked South Africa at Brighton in 2015, and then each of the number one-ranked Ireland as well as Scotland, at their home Rugby World Cup four years later.

He won the man-of-the-match award in Japan’s 19-12 win over Ireland, which ultimately led to their first Rugby World Cup quarterfinal.

A constant presence for his club, Horie has played alongside some fellow big names of the game: Wallabies David Pocock and Berrick Barnes, All Blacks Sam Whitelock and Sonny Bill Williams, England’s George Krius, Wales’s Hadleigh Parkes, to name just a few.

On Sunday, he will have Springboks Damien de Allende and Lood de Jager, as well as Wallaby winger Marika Koroibete, for company in the final leg of his farewell.

The Wild Knights made the decider on the back of 17 straight league wins.

They also thrashed Super Rugby’s Chiefs in the inaugural Cross Border series.

Of those 18 games, the self-proclaimed ‘old man’ of the team has featured 16 times, the figure a testament to his professionalism in how Horie looks after himself off the field, body and mind.

The numbers are also recognition from his coaches and teammates as to how important he is, on the field and around the training base, in one of the most dominant dynasties the game in Japan has ever seen.

As well as their six titles since the game went semi-professional in 2003 with the inauguration of the Top League, the Wild Knights have lost just twice since the game returned from its’ Covid enforced hiatus in 2020, at one point going 47 games without defeat.

But all journeys have an end and for Horie, that moment is just two days away when he will run out onto the National Stadium for the final time.

Appropriately, given his remarkable career, he signs off in the league final, as the Wild Knights chase a record seventh national title against Toshiba Brave Lupus Tokyo.