fredvarcoe.com

By Keith Davies

Japanese Rugby Is a Basket Case? OK, here goes….

Over the last 35 years I probably invested more time and effort into Japanese rugby than any other overseas coach or player, including Eddie Jones. Probably more than most Japanese coaches in fact. Having coached numerous teams from High School to Top League since 1982, I have achieved first time national championship qualification or promotion with 8 different teams, more than any other coach, so I think I am qualified to vent my opinion on a particularly dark day in Japanese rugby.

I have just heard that despite an unbeaten league and playoff season, the first for 53 years, and promotion to the Top Challenge League, Kurita in the Top East League will not be renewing the contract of their head coach. Yet again, petty jealousies, backstabbing, borderline racial discrimination, and incompetent team management in a corporate team, has led to another foreign coach and some players, being made the scapegoat for poor recruiting, poor management, poor team support and the ignorance of decision makers who have no rugby experience whatsoever outside of their own company set up.

This is not a particularly exceptional occurrence, it happens throughout Japanese company rugby and is one of the main reasons why there are only 2 or 3 companies, that are consistently strong from year to year. All the others just have a revolving door policy for foreign staff and players, which essentially ensures there is no continuity, and that incompetent Japanese coaches and staff will get promoted by default whether they are qualified or not.

Unlike other sporting leagues around the world, success in Japanese corporate rugby does not mean that you get more advertising, more TV revenue, bigger attendances and opportunities to promote your brand at your own stadiums and facilities.

Success & winning and advancement up the leagues in Japan just means that it is going to cost the company that owns the team a lot more money. No one will openly admit it of course, but in reality, many teams do not really want to get better, they cant afford to!!

Success equals more team travel, more recruitment, more training camps, more time off work for the average corporate player, and no real payback for the company that is footing the bill. As a coach, I have been involved at 3 companies who became victims of their own success and ended up completely terminating their rugby program because of financial stress from winning. There are many documented examples of this. It causes a little ripple in the JRFU for a few weeks but soon goes away and is forgotten, and nothing changes.

Forget the World Cup 2019, and all the hype around the tournament, JAPANESE RUGBY IS DYING! There will not be a legacy from the World Cup. Playing numbers in the lead up to the tournament are plummeting, coaching levels are as poor as they have always been, referees still have zero support for their efforts, and the marketing of the game is dismal.

Unless there is quick, radical change, post WC the domestic game will just plod on the way it does now, failure after dismal failure. There are dumb administrators making dumb decisions and the domestic game is being driven into oblivion.

I doubt anyone at the JRFU will listen or act on such blunt accusations, other than to blindly convince themselves that everything is under control.

Something radical must be said and done so that the domestic game can begin to recover. Someone, Japanese, the people around the domestic game, concerned about the state of the game, must come out and, confront this bumbling, incompetent group of people who are running the game. Eddie Jones tried, gave his heart and soul to Japanese rugby, and so have many others, but to no avail.

I began writing this from a hotel room in beautiful Nara, furious after receiving news regarding this coach. I was there to participate at the National High School Tournament, an annual spectacle where all the top schools from all over the country come together to decide the best high school team in Japan. A team I coached for 6 months has qualified to be here for the first time in their history.

However, I found it very difficult to be over enthusiastic about the tournament. Our first-round game if we win (We did) will be followed less than 40 hours later by a round 2 game against the top seeded team in the tournament, and the whole tournament is run with just one day turnaround between games. There is no concern for player welfare, it’s just done like that because it always has been. There will be 100 point games, and even here at the National Championships some teams are so low in numbers that they cannot even field a full bench. Other teams will have qualified from prefectures where only 2 teams contested the qualification. The game is definitely not expanding.

Japan was ranked as high as 10th in the world in recent times but stadiums are empty for the most part. Meanwhile, The Japan Basketball League is currently being played out in front of sellout crowds, has great marketing and event management, but the national team is ranked only 52nd in the world according to official FIBA data. It is the perfect example of what could happen if the right people were put in charge of rugby in Japan.

In my mind The Sunwolves Super Rugby concept has become a joke. The last time I checked there were 21 foreign players and counting, contracted to the team. How exactly is this going to develop Japanese players and provide the stepping stone to international level to eventually strengthen the Japanese national team. Good luck to all the players and staff who are contracted to the team, it is not a joke to them, they will give their all, but is it having positive effect on grassroots Japanese rugby at all? I wonder.

Where is the support for school rugby, development of coaching and players at entry level? I really do feel sorry for young kids who think they might want to play the game but are then subjected to ridiculous training and coaching methods. Only 2 days ago while watching a ‘B’ Team game I witnessed a teacher from a very famous high school punching and slapping players in a 10-minute rant after conceding a try. During this time the opposition players were expected to just line up wait, and get cold while this ridiculous spectacle continued. The problem was of course that very little of what was happening on the field was because of a lack of desire by the players involved, it was because that coach had obviously failed them with his own outdated methods and lack of knowledge. This is not the advertisement that the game needs either for players, or parents. The “School Wars” mentality unfortunately still drives high school rugby.

Sporting trends are changing worldwide, and new approaches to driving participation need to be adopted. My friend the brilliant Wayne Goldsmith regularly commentates on these aspects of sport in his fantastic seminars around the world. If the JRFU thinks that because of their ignorance and incompetence, and resistance to change that they are going to be the only sporting body in the world to buck those trends then they are abysmally wrong, they are already abysmally failing.

There are good people working in Japanese Rugby, people who love rugby, I have probably met more than most over the course of my career, but they are working in isolation, there is no national plan for coaching or game development, no leadership and there are no decisions being made to secure the future of the game.

I have repeatedly said over the course of my long career, that the players themselves have great potential if exposed to good coaching and processes, but they are not. As previously stated, I feel sorry for players starting out in the game as they are largely putting their development into the hands of completely unqualified coaches.

University coaching, at a vitally important time in player development terms is diabolical. Coaches are appointed not based on ability or experience, through open appointment processes, but on incestuous old boy loyalties, and most Kantoku or GM’s (Not all) are institutionalized figure heads who see themselves as untouchable, and in most cases, win or lose they are!

Believe me I realize that this might well be the last thing I ever get to write about Japanese rugby from the inside. I have not had a smooth ride with rugby officialdom in Japan up to now. Being someone who has tried to drive change, despite continually producing winning teams at ALL levels, has not endeared me to the establishment, and after this I doubt if things will improve?? But enough is enough.

The announcement regarding the head coach of this Top East team was a distinctly dark day for Japanese Rugby and has prompted me to pen this open letter to defend his professionalism and achievement despite the best efforts of people in that team to sabotage the season. The person in question came to Japan as a player initially, at the pinnacle of his career, and is now a coach who has given so much to the game in Japan over many years. He represented Japan as both player and coach and should not be treated like this, it is shameful and inexcusable.