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Tour diary: the final wash-up, and my World Cup awards
Wednesday morning. I’m back in a quite wet Cape Town and struggling to sleep, probably because my body clock, after weeks of getting used to Japanese time, has now finally settled on Japan time as the zone I should be in. It works like that!
Tokyo suddenly seems so far away. Not that it shouldn’t for to get home took 24 hours almost to the minute, and only about an hour and 40 minutes of that wasn’t spent in the air. And if you look at the map, it is far. It’s far closer to the USA than it is to here. I had a mate who lives in New York City who said goodbye to me on Sunday afternoon and then messaged me on landing what seemed only a matter of a few hours later. Lucky him to be able to get to Japan so easily. If you fly from Tokyo to California it will take just 10 hours, and to Honolulu it is seven. Just some useless information if you are interested.
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Dubai Airport, as anticipated, was quite different to what it was on my way out there on a Saturday morning in mid-September. The Rugby World Cup kick-off was still a week away then. The fact that I saw only one Springbok supporters jersey was remarked upon, but in truth there were’t a lot of English, Scottish, Irish or New Zealand jersey in evidence back then either. The World Cup was still in the future.
The only jersey that was lacking this time was the Wallaby supporters jersey. But then they exited the World Cup so long ago that they’ve probably forgotten they had a team at the World Cup. The Irish like a party too much to forget that there was a World Cup, and many stayed to the end. If there was anything that they forgot, apart maybe from their first names, it was that they once did have a team there.
Not that I had time to moon around the airport soaking up the last of the World Cup atmosphere. Because there was some of that in evidence. The airport over there, as those who have travelled through often will vouch, operates very efficiently. Everything works so well, and appears to be so on schedule, that it could easily be Japan. Personally, I could have done with longer on the ground to stretch the legs after the 12 hour flight from Tokyo and ahead of the nine and a half to Cape Town than less than just over an hour and a half. I had time to scull one great big very welcome Heineken draft, and I mean scull quite literally, I haven’t done that since university, before rushing for a flight that was already boarding.
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My departure from Tokyo wasn’t uneventful. Perhaps just to show me up for boasting in my farewell to Japan blog that I knew my way around now, some station conductor taught me a lesson by putting me on a train that he said went to Haneda Airport from the underground station near Kyobashi. What he didn’t tell me was that I had to get off and change trains. By the time I reached Yokohama - yes, Yokohama, another city - I realised I was on the wrong track.
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Fortunately I had left myself with enough time to make up for the mistake. I’d have been in trouble if I had gone all the way to Osaka. What was problematic though was the length of the queue, and how long it took everyone to be processed. I was flying at half past midnight and in the queue at about 9pm, but I kid you not when I say that by the time I was finally checked in, and through security, I had less than hour before take-off, and about 20 minutes until the boarding gates opened. Not enough time to properly enjoy my final drink with my colleague, Gareth Jenkinson, who works for a KZN radio station, who was flying on a different airline via Doha.
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Perhaps the reason everything went so slowly in that queue was related to that whole efficiency thing. Flying out no-one had a problem with my two pieces of cabin luggage. We are not talking big bags. Small laptop bags. But the lady at the counter was insistant - in economy you are only allowed one hand luggage. So I hurriedly emptied the one backpack and stuffed it into my suitcase.
Which then prompted another of those experiences, my final one from that country for this trip, that you can only get in Japan. What I took out of my backpack and quite impatiently told her that I was leaving with her were a whole lot of media guides that I had been issued during the tour, plus some match programmes. I don’t do the souvenir thing, so it was all garbage in my view, because you can get all that stuff online. But you should have seen the mood of the lady behind the check-in counter. She beamed at me like I had given her a year’s supply of red roses. She thought it was a present. She thanked me profusely. So profusely it was embarrassing and holding up the queue of impatient travellers behind me.
And even after the check-in formalities were complete, which took longer than it should have she was beaming so much, she thanked me again for the “presents”, and congratulated me on winning the World Cup. Of course I didn’t win anything, but I knew what she meant. South Africans are big in Japan right now. It’s a pity we couldn’t stay another week just to be feted on.
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So let’s go on to those awards for a World Cup which on reflection I have decided is certainly the one that will most live on in the memory, and could well have been the best ever. Certainly in terms of the new ground it broke for rugby, particularly in the Asian market, it was a very significant, even seismic (seeing earthquakes got more than a passing mention during the course of the tournament) event.
I did read some tripe from some writers based back home that were a million miles away from the tournament saying that the tournament should never have been held in Japan. To me that underlined why their media houses should have forked out the money to send them to the World Cup. To have a proper view of things you need to be there. In fact, if this World Cup has done anything to me, it is remind me of how important it is to tour if you are going to write about it with any authority. It is getting less and less affordable, but I’d almost go as far as to suggest that if you don’t tour there’s almost no point in doing this job.
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An example of what I am talking about. Well, two actually. The first one - you had to be in Japan to appreciate just how debilitating and impactful the humidity was on the type of rugby that was played. It wasn’t like Durban in February, as some have said. It was much worse than that. The second - you really had to be there to fully understand the challenge the Springboks faced in that quarterfinal against the host nation at the Tokyo Stadium. I’ve never heard support like that. Both before and during the game. The Boks knew the whole world was against them that day, and when Beast Mtwarira was yellow carded, and forced to defend against a team that was the best attacking force in the tournament when they did have ball to play with, which they did then, they were up against it.
Japan coach Jamie Joseph said it himself, the Boks did astoundingly well to prevent his team from scoring. And the fact the Boks played 160 minutes against Japan across that game and the warm-up game and only conceded one try and 10 points was remarkable. As was their World Cup record of giving Wales just 1.3 metres in average across the semifinal. The best defensive team at the World Cup? The Boks by far. The record speaks for itself. Just four tries conceded in seven matches. Two of those tries came in the space of a few minutes against the All Blacks.
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The best attacking team was Japan, although if you look at the stats reflecting number of points and tries scored across the tournament, the Boks weren’t as far away as people might think. There are many different ways to attack. And surely if you score lots of tries, you are then an attacking team, and not just a defensive team? As I wrote at the time, the Boks played the pragmatic rugby they needed to in order to beat Wales and Japan in the play-offs. They may have overdone it a bit against Wales, where the plan was just to be more patient than them and kick everything they kicked at you back at them. It nearly backfired on them. It’s thanks mainly to Francois Louw’s late turn-over in that game that the post-World Cup narrative is as positive for South Africans as it is. It so nearly wasn’t.
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The most enjoyable game of the World Cup award goes to the Japan win over Scotland. We nearly never got there. In fact, the game nearly never took place because of Typhoon Hagibis. But it was played, and it is no exaggeration to suggest that the Japanese played rugby from another planet in that first half. And the support they got was worth the cost of travelling to the World Cup just to witness. I hope that continues and Japan keeps up momentum, rugby needs that.
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Performance of the World Cup, as in one-off game, would be a tie for me between New Zealand’s annihilation of Ireland in their quarterfinal and England’s power display against the All Blacks a week later. In both instances we saw rugby of the highest quality. In the England/All Black game what was surprising though was that the All Blacks failed to adjust their game when it was so clearly necessary to do so. If ever I saw experienced players bottle it under pressure, that was the day it happened.
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Most idiotic moment of the World Cup. It has to be the French lock’s elbow attack on a Welshman in the quarterfinal that saw him sent off. The Frenchman has subsequently retired. I don’t want to get into trouble for suggesting this, but I do think there should be some kind of proper investigation, and I mean away from the rugby itself, of what really happened there. That incident, and the unemotional way it was carried out, somehow just beggared belief. And it changed the whole course of the game. In his autobiography, in reference to what we will remember as the Bryce Lawrence refereeing freakshow that knocked the Boks out of the 2011 World Cup quarterfinal, former Bok coach Peter de Villiers asked that if the sort of crooked book-maker interference can make itself felt in cricket as it did with the Hansie Cronje incident and others since then, why not rugby?
I’m not saying that there was something crooked going on there. Just that it reminds me that perhaps there does need to be the same sort of vigilance with rugby as there is with cricket.
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Talking of betting, the Mug of the World Cup must surely be Rob Howley, the Welshman assistant coach who was expelled from the World Cup before it had even started because, as I have been reliably informed, he was betting on Welsh team selections.
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Player of the World Cup: That goes to the same man that World Rugby gave it to on Sunday night. And ditto Rassie Erasmus when it came to coach, though I would have come close to giving it to Jamie Joseph. What he did with Japan to make them competitive, and beyond that into the most watchable team in world rugby, was the stuff of fantasy and not reality.
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Talking of Japan, the shock of the World Cup was Ireland losing to the hosts. Ireland had just thumped Scotland in what was supposed to be their big game at the World Cup, no-one saw that coming.
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Soothsayer of the World Cup goes to Rassie Erasmus. He predicted almost everything that happened in the other Pools and was far from surprised when his team ended up facing Japan in the World Cup quarterfinal. He had also warned those who were expecting a Bok/All Black final not to jump the gun. And when he did that it was in the early days.
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Try of the tournament. The World Rugby Awards got the wrong Cobus Reinach try. It should have been the one against Canada where he used his pace to burst through the initial line of defence and then kicked and gathered. That was certainly the best individualistic try of the World Cup. The two scored in the final by Makazole Mapimpi and Cheslin Kolbe weren’t far behind.
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What was learned at this World Cup? I think the biggest lesson was one we really should have known already. Sometimes there is way too much assumption on what might happen a long time ahead, and then in a matter of hours it is all turned on its head because sport, after all, is unpredictable.
In 2011 the Boks went to that World Cup expecting to play Ireland in their quarterfinal. It didn’t happen because Ireland unexpectedly beat Australia. Those involved in that World Cup will tell you that suddenly having to play the Wallabies rather than Ireland did thrown them a bit.
Ireland, and I know this because of the number of phone calls I got from Irish journalists over the previous 18 months enquiring about the state of South African rugby, were pre-occupied with the Springboks from the moment the draw suggested the two teams would meet in the quarters. Again, it didn’t happen. Instead the Irish played the All Blacks. And we know what happened there.
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What the All Blacks did wrong at this World Cup? Quite a few things actually, and their coach needs to take some blame for the way he messed around with his selections of the back three in particular, but also the front row and loose-forward. Sevu Reece and George Bridge are good players but they are not experienced. Beauden Barrett is actually a fine fullback, but playing him there meant he couldn’t play where he was needed when it mattered, which was at pivot. The All Blacks needed to run at George Ford. Richie Mo’unga wasn’t the man to do that. And the selection of Scott Barrett on the flank. What was that?
But in the final analysis the biggest Kiwi mistake was actually winning the pool game against South Africa. Had they lost that game, and come second in the group, England wouldn’t have been there to underestimate in the semifinal stage. The All Blacks always had a healthy respect for South Africa. Their World Cup might well have turned out differently had they not won in Yokohama.
Having said that, take a look at the current All Black team. Do they have the world beaters they used to have? I think not. There’s some rebuilding to do in the land of the long white cloud. The Boks should be favoured to do another thing they haven’t done before - win the Rugby Championship back to back. Given the mood Rassie Erasmus is in right now, wanting to start planning the way forward before the celebrations of winning the World Cup are over, my money says they will.
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And finally, the best meal of the tour. Liam del Carme and myself are both adventurous eaters and invariably dined together. He reckons it is hard to isolate one meal when they were all so splendid. But for those wanting to go to Japan, Kobe Beef must a be a definite meal to target. Warning, the stuff is rich. In fact the Wagyu beef is rich too. I woke up on a couple of times at the World Cup thinking I was hung-over only for someone to point out that the nausea was probably caused by the richness of the meal the night before. Don’t eat it in the quantities you might eat it red meat South Africa.
My most memorable meal by far though was one where I dined with Liam and Gerald Imray of AP during our stay in Nagoya. We couldn’t figure out the menu, in many places they don’t have an English version. So I told the chef just to give us the set menu, which was what was recommended. Phew. We didn’t know what to expect, but it was outstanding, and the food, which included sushi, eel, you name it, just kept coming. So my advice - just be adventurous and go for it. You shouldn’t be disappointed.
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When the good people of Kobe treated us to a day out which included a cruise around Kobe harbour and then a set menu followed by a visit to an onsen, I experienced my own personal little highlight of the tour. They gave us good instruction on how things are done in Japan, table manners, cultural expectations. It was superb. But what I really enjoyed was when a lady tour guide instructed a fellow journalist not only to watch how I handled my chopsticks, but to video it so he could learn from me. Apparently handling chopsticks is something I can do as well as the Japanese. It was good news because I had no idea if I was doing it correctly or not. So it is a great feeling to walk away with my own little award - Best Foreign Eater at the World Cup.
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And that, ladies and gentleman, was the 2019 Rugby World Cup. Thanks for reading.
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