Generally, the more you talk about the opposition in the build-up to a game, the more worried you are about your team.
To my mind, you’re either talking to try and sway the ref to pay attention to an area of the game where you’re weak or concerned about – the tighthead side of your scrum getting angled and popped up against one of the weakest scrums in the tournament, for example, or else you’re trying to psych up your squad up to essentially to “walk your talk”. That’s a favourite of Eddie Jones and Warren Gatland. When I saw Scotland chatting about “smashing Johnny Sexton” ahead of #IREvSCO last week, it seemed like a coaching crew that was under pressure for a bit of self-belief and desperately trying to inject some “heat” into the squad. When I see Japan, of all nations, at the same thing this week I’m reminded of the same things I was in Scotland last week – insecurity.
What do Japan have to be insecure about? Let’s have a look;
Green Eye Report :: Japan (A)
The Green Eye Report is where I rate the opposition (and Ireland) as a whole in a World Rugby context as first choice units and then, depending on the how far away both Ireland and the opposition are from what I would consider “full strength” and how the teams actually taking the field rate against each other.
S – Elite level
A – Good World Level
B – Average World Level
C – Poor World Level
Rugby World Cup 2019 :: Japan vs Ireland
Full Strength Red Eye Rating: Japan (C) / Ireland (S)
Teamsheet Adjusted Red Eye Rating: Japan (C) / Ireland (A+)
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First, this isn’t a weakened Japanese selection compared to last week. Michael Leitch, their captain, might well be on the bench but this is all but the same team selection that Brown used when Japan beat Fiji in the Pacific Nations Cup a few months ago. That was the biggest result in Japan’s recent history and the performance that maps best with what I think Brown will want from his squad in this game.
That game certainly caught my eye when watching it live but subsequent watches of Japan (and Fiji) lead me to believe that the result was more down to the low standards of the Pacific Nations Cup more than anything else. Fiji were better than that result showed, I thought – I was wrong – but I wondered what lessons would Japan take from that win.
Here’s what I took from it;
- Any Japanese back row without Mafi in it isn’t full strength.
- Japan play a 1-3-3-1/1-3-2-2 that focuses on getting the ball to Mafi/Horie in the wider areas.
- We can see where the Japanese lineout is weak by watching where they are strong.
In one way, there isn’t much to look at in the Russian game from last Friday.
Japan were poor enough under the high ball in that game but I don’t know if I’d say that they’ll be as poor under the high ball again this weekend. Will Tupou, the player who spilt a few handy balls last week, has been selected on the wing for this game and he (and others) will be targeted under the high ball down the tramlines for certain, but I wouldn’t expect any unusually large gains outside the norm there.
Outside of those high-ball incidents, Russia didn’t offer all that much and fell away considerably as the game developed. There was a small note – how worried Japan are about their stopping power around the ruck and how that can be hijacked by tip-on passes – but the overall level of both sides was quite low.
Let’s have a look at some of their threats.
Lineout Structures
Japan want pace ball at Four and Six on their lineout and most of the deception the employ is to take away targeted counter-launches around Four C and Four D as described below.
That isn’t to say that Japan don’t attack at the front of the lineout – they do – but they rarely build any mauls or wider attacking plays there. They have a nice little maul feint reverse play that they tried against Russia that attacks the 5m tramline but it didn’t come off for them.
Nagare (#9) is the feint option here to draw numbers towards the openside and from the tramline but Labuschagne gets his timing wrong with the connecting line to the back row.
You can see how it’s supposed to work here;
This is one of their favourite ways of getting Mafi into the game and I think Jaan will want to use this to get some hard contact on Conor Murray, who Ireland keep in the 5m line on these lineouts.
Furlong and O’Mahony will have a key responsibility in guarding against this scheme because it’s too good a use of Mafi for Japan not to try it at least once.
If Ireland go too heavy at the front of the lineout, Japan have a few first phase reverse plays that target the 5m channel off a midfield carry.
Murray, Furlong, Ryan and O’Mahony will have to be careful with their lateral speed off these throws.
Japan also want to get Mafi or Labuschagne coming around the corner onto Carty as often as possible. They have another maul feint lineout scheme that they use to get a wide front runner angling into the 10 channel.
The second pass from the scrumhalf to Leitch is what creates the angle for Japan to get into Carty, and they’ll try this from anywhere inside our half except it’ll be Mafi coming from the front of the lineout, rather than Leitch.
Japan’s wins over Russia (and Fiji) were dictated on the back of a very reliable lineout. Sure, Shota Horie, the Japanese hooker, is one of the biggest crabbers – shuffling to his side constantly – in the tournament, but he’s got a nice tight throw with a good arc but it does lack killer flat pace.
How do we go about disrupting the Japanese lineout?
I think we need to attack them in position and mostly ignore their pre-throw deceptions. Most of Japan’s throwing against Fiji and Russia went towards the following areas.
Most of their deceptions are based on launch-feints because I think Japan realise that most sides know they don’t want to take Two A or Two B ball so a lot of their feints are based on throwing off the exact position. That means feinting at 4C to launch at 4D. Or feinting at 4C to launch at 6E and so on.
If you look at this one, you can see the launch feint is to 4D with Leitch stepping in to lift Moore at 4C.
Note the crabbing action of the hooker.Blue #5 almost guesses correctly on the position but he loses his lifters. When we look at the times that Russia and Fiji got close to disrupting Japan, or even forced a turnover, it was with a counter-launch at Four and/or Six.
If Shota Horie has an accurate (but slow) throw and Japan like that high arced throw beyond 4C, then there’s no point in contesting too heavily at the front of the lineout. I’d throw up two counter launches here…
… and stress the Japanese timing. O’Mahony and Furlong can track back and “mark” jumpers like Himeno and Moore, while Henderson can watch for pod’s coalescing at the tail and time his counter-jump on the hooker’s throw without worrying about position. In practice, this means that O’Mahony and Furlong are watching the players, while Henderson is watching the entire lineout and timing the hooker.
If we can take away Japan’s more expansive lineouts and force them into the maul, we’ll be a long way to winning this game.
Ultimately, the recipe for winning this game is quite similar to Scotland but with a different focus. Japan don’t have the same tight-five issue that Scotland have, in my opinion, so I don’t think we’ll see the same type of kicking as we did against Scotland, or even as much box kicking at all.
All of Japan’s forwards are comfortable handling the ball – they’re playing a modified 1-3-3-2 in the below example as they come from left to right – and they often string multiple passes together on their phase play. This example is very similar to what Japan will look to do with the ball in hand against us.
Tony Brown was key to play this down during the week, for some odd reason, but they’ll look for speed of recycling and width on the ball. It won’t generate a linebreak on the first phase but they look to retain possession and “unbalance” the defence. When they play with this tempo, they can cause you trouble.
As with any 1-3-3-2 system, you can break it with a slowed ruck on the edges. Unlike Scotland, who love those big openside plays, Japan don’t have the ball carrying threats to play “big openside” ball so if you can disrupt and slow their ruck at the widest point, you can reset your defence, slow down the phases and start hurting them in collisions.
If you stop and slow them in the middle of the field, they will try an angled kick off the centre-field ruck position more often than not.
Russia gave up a lot of space on these plays but I don’t think we’ll be caught out as readily.
From an Irish POV, we’ll want to keep this where Japan don’t want it – we’ll want to hang onto the ball and play a lot of hammer zone > strike zone > hammer zone type patterns to soften up their pack for scrum penalty/maul advantages later. I would expect more contestable box kicking because, from a percentage perspective, we’ll back ourselves to come out on top in most contests and, if we can’t do that, force a knock-on to get our defensive scrum into the game. There are more than a few penalties there given the pack we’ve selected to start.
From a set-piece perspective, expect some of our 10/12 focused schemes off scrum and lineout to get dusted off.
If I was to pick one scheme that would work against Japan, I’d go back to November 2017 and pick out this first phase strike off a left-sided scrum position.
This targeted Sanchez off the first phase and the resetting forwards on the second phase. Japan will be concerned about Farrell’s impact on all of their midfield off scrum set-piece. None of Tamura, Nakamura or Lafaele are heavy-hitting defenders we can bank on them narrowing around any Farrell attack line. Ringrose has the hands to make this loop work around the corner for Carty and Stockdale, and this allows us to effectively target the lateral speed of Mafi and Labuschagne as they come around that first ruck.
Japan might be talking big, but I think this Irish side can put 30/40 points on them as long as we can manage our carrying rotations off 9 and 10 to the same standard as last weekend. Carty will need to choke down some of his instincts to “play” and bring some runners in on those “strike” phases.
