By George Stephens • Published: 28 Sep 2019 • 12:59
How the game went.
Ireland earned an early lineout from the kickoff. If you wanted to see an upset then the start by Japan was needed.
“We knew how tough it was going to be. Anyone that thought was utterly shocked hasn’t seen how good they are.
We came in a game plan and we felt we were really prepared. Give credit to them, they played really well and we made a few mistakes, a few unforced errors and were on the wrong side of the penalty count. They posed a lot of questions and we couldn’t come up with the answers”
Meanwhile, the Japanese head coach was flying he said
We’re ecstatic about the result, we’re very proud of the players. We had a plan and have trained for a long time, we have been thinking about this game for quite a long time and obviously, Ireland had only been thinking about it for the last six or seven days. For us, it’s been a great performance.
You have to be careful before the game, you don’t want to come across too arrogant and cocky. We had a lot of belief in our game plan and knew how strong Ireland were. Credit to my coaching team, at the set-piece we were able to hold theirs.
Now it’s phase two, we’ve got another couple of games to go but we’ll enjoy tonight I reckon”
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