Ireland will not want to remember today for very long. They will want thumping victories over Samoa and Russia and Scotland doing them a favour by beating Japan to render defeat in Shizuoka a mere blip.
But this will not fade in the Japanese national memory. There are 127 million for whom the 2015 win over South Africa has just been topped by a 19-12 victory over Ireland.
There cannot have been many more seismic moments than the first ever Asian host of a Rugby World Cup beating the No.1 ranked side in the world. You can dismiss the rankings all you like, this was an almighty upset.
The post-mortem will have started already back home, where Brian O’Driscoll said the ‘mood of the whole will have changed’, as a population wonder how the 2018 Grand Slam winners became the wrong side of the story of the 2019 World Cup.
Johnny Sexton’s absence
If you Google Johnny Sexton, the next suggested word, ahead of news, net worth, wife and drop goal, is injury. As the Irish fly-half reaches his mid-30s, the country’s cotton wool trade rejoices because Joe Schmidt has to keep wrapping him in as much of it as possible.
This week, it was a thigh problem that kept him out of training on Tuesday and that combined with the ‘mileage’ the coach had given him on Sunday against Scotland saw him left out of the matchday 23.
‘In the last World Cup, we got through to the play-offs and we were a little bit decimated,’ Schmidt explained afterwards
‘This time, we decided we needed to make sure that the whole squad were utilised in the lead-up to the play-offs if we can make it there.’
It was a comment Schmidt would have made irrespective of the result but the ‘if’ was not in the script. The coach tried to box clever and take a long view of the tournament. But surely the hosts’ first major clash, with Samoa and Russia’s physical but less sophisticated challenges to come, was not the time to leave Sexton out?
For all Conor Murray’s ability – and he did have a rare off day – they missed Sexton’s experience and his controlling boot and if he had his time again, I wonder if Schmidt would have made the same choice.
The referee’s whistle
Angus Gardner has never refereed at a World Cup before and he has been given quite the baptism of fire. The Australian was criticised by both coaches after his debut saw France scrape past Argentina 23-21 and even before the pressure of officiating the hosts, Schmidt was dropping his name into conversation.
The Ireland coach was raking over old ground in his pre-match press conference by complaining about not getting decisions and his mentions of being on the wrong side of the penalty count and being unable to match the line speed of the Japanese defence were thinly veiled jibes at the officiating.
In black and white, Ireland conceded nine penalties to Japan’s six. By our count, two or perhaps three were 50:50s that did not go their way. Gardner warned captain Rory Best early on that he was not enjoying flanker Peter O’Mahony’s work and that he needed to ‘see a different picture’ at the breakdown. He did, but the colour scheme became much more red-and-white than the green that O’Mahony has so often turned rucks over the years.
The weather
The only thing more tedious than coaches blaming the referee is coaches blaming the weather, which of course is the same for both sides. When Ireland beat Scotland, both teams should have been more than used to the torrential rain that fell during much of the contest, even if the heat was unfamiliar.
This time, the Irish had to cope with heat and humidity, but that should hardly have been a surprise. Michael Fish with his eyes closed could have told you months ago that Shizuoka was going to be a bit sticky in September, and Ireland should have prepared for it.
Instead, they left Brian O’Driscoll questioning whether they had been caught out: ‘Ireland looked very blunt. They were devoid of ideas.
‘They looked devoid of energy actually – I wonder did the conditions and the humidity take effect? Because it wasn’t the Ireland that we’ve come to expect over the course of the last couple of years.’
A stunning performance from Japan ?? Listen to that noise ?#JPNvIRE #ITVRugby #RWC2019 pic.twitter.com/RojBw4garK
— ITV Rugby (@ITVRugby) September 28, 2019
The gameplan
Even a cursory glance at Japan’s performance against Russia on opening night would have told Ireland’s analysts to test Japan under the high ball. This side need no invitation to do so and even Jack Carty did his best Sexton impression and inside 21 minutes, two kicks had produced two tries.
But with ball in hand, Ireland were one-dimensional. There is no question they miss Bundee Aki at 12 but in Garry Ringrose, Keith Earls and Jacob Stockdale, they have a host of potent threats. After the first quarter, they failed to use the width properly and former Ireland winger Shane Horgan was tearing his hair out with the usually reliable Murray’s kicking and tactics.
‘The approach to the game was wrong, quite naive,’ Horgan said.
‘We looked one-dimensional, kept going one or two metres outside the ruck on each attack and that’s exactly where the Japanese wanted us to go.
‘Our kicking game wasn’t very good, we should have made a change at nine earlier.’
The brilliance of Japan
It is all very well to dissect the corpse of Ireland’s performance and find the various under-performing organs, but we must not overlook what Japan achieved.
When they targeted the quarter-finals four years ago, people laughed at Eddie Jones’ optimism. No-one is laughing now, not least in Ireland. Previously renowned for their pace and elusiveness out wide, they have added physicality in the scrum, agility at the breakdown and discipline in defence. At no point did they fear throwing it wide and they rarely panicked in defence; the two starting locks, Luke Thompson and James Moore, made 42 tackles between them and did not miss a single one.
To the untrained eye, this is a shock. After the fact, the defeat captain Best insisted they always believed Japan were more than capable of beating them.
‘Anyone who is utterly shock hasn’t seen how good they were,’ Best said.
‘Japan played really and posed us a lot of questions, unfortunately we couldn’t come up with the right answers.’
For a few days, Ireland will face a few more questions and their quest to make it past the dreaded quarter-finals relies on whether they can come up with any answers.
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