Japan League One Rugby returns

The fourth edition of Japan Rugby League One kicks off next week, with the tournament opening with the clash between
Mie Honda Heat and Ricoh Black Rams Tokyo on December 21.
The match is the first of 209 in Division One’s regular season, with the competition expanded by three additional entries
in Division Three: Yakult Levins Toda, LeRIRO Fukuoka and SECOM Sayama Rugguts.
An extra week has also been added to the finals series in Division One, taking the length of the season to 21 weeks
(including division-wide bye rounds), with the final to be played in Tokyo on Sunday June 1, 2025.
The promotion/relegation ‘Replacement Battle’ series between Divisions One and Two has been downsized and will
involve just four teams playing home and away, as opposed to the previous six-team format.

Division One

Despite fielding a largely unchanged playing roster following last season’s thrilling victory in the final at the National
Stadium, history suggests Toshiba Brave Lupus Tokyo’s task of defending the title will be even harder than it was to win
the competition in the first place.
Brave Lupus became the third champions of the first three seasons of League One after edging the inaugural winners,
Saitama Panasonic Wild Knights, 24-20 in a dramatic finish to the championship game which was played in front of 56,486
fans at the National Stadium.

With All Black flyhalf Richie Mo’unga and ex-test teammate and backrower Shannon Frizell leading the charge, alongside
an impressive cast of local players which includes Brave Blossoms winger Jone Naikabula, second rower Warner Dearns,
hooker Mamoru Harada and veteran loose forward Michael Leitch, Brave Lupus will be hard to beat.
So too will the side they beat last time, with the Wild Knights having featured in all three of the league’s finals, beating
Tokyo Suntory Sungoliath first up, before narrow losses to Kubota Spears Funabashi Tokyo Bay and Brave Lupus.

Kings of the regular season, the Saitama-based outfit have won all but six of their 54 matches in the qualifying phase – in
two of those they didn’t even play as they were Covid-enforced forfeits – but they have lost veteran hooker Shota Horie
(retirement) and long-time Brave Blossoms flyhalf Rikiya Matsuda from last year’s line-up.
Matsuda has replaced All Black Beauden Barrett at Toyota Verblitz.
The recruitment of the 30-year-old, who scored 207 points last term, is one of several key changes at Toyota, as Director
of Rugby Steve Hansen continues to look for a winning formula in Aichi, having failed to make the playoffs in the league’s
first three editions.

Last season, Verblitz finished a disappointing seventh.
A key arrival is that of Hansen’s long-time coaching partner and All Black successor Ian Foster, who as head coach, has
taken up his first role since guiding New Zealand to the final at last year’s Rugby World Cup.
Veteran second row Richie Gray is another new addition; one of two Scotland internationals to have made their way to
Japan, with hooker George Turner joining his former Glasgow boss Dave Rennie at Kobe.
Like Hansen, Rennie has made some key additions in a bid to build on last season’s improved showing, with the Scot
joined by Yokohama’s try-scoring revelation from recent seasons, winger Inoke Burua, along with ex-Ulster coach Dan
McFarland.

The Scottish influence has taken on a new dimension at Urayasu D-Rocks as well, with ex-test captain Greig Laidlaw taking
charge of the club he ended his playing career with.
Promoted after back-to-back Division Two championships, D-Rocks arrive armed with big-name Wallabies Israel Folau

and Samu Kerevi, along with backrower Jasper Wiese; one of eight members of South Africa’s Rugby Championship-
winning squad who will play this season’s league.

Winger Kurt Lee Arendse is another of these.
He teams with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Sagamihara Dynaboars, who finished ninth last term, but were comfortably
clear of the promotion/relegation series after winning six matches.
In the 2023-24 season, the Kanagawa-based club had won just four times.

Arendse’s fellow hot stepping Springbok, Cheslin Kolbe, will be looking to bring his test form – which dazzled the crowd
at Twickenham last month – to Japan, after having been restricted to 11 matches on debut for Sungoliath last season.
With each of Kolbe, All Black Sam Cane and Wallaby Sean McMahon dogged by injury, there was plenty of merit in last
term’s semi-final appearance by Sungoliath, but Kosei Ono – part of the Brave Blossoms team which beat South Africa at
the 2015 Rugby World Cup – will aspire for more as he suits up for his maiden season as a head coach.
While pre-season form is not always a reliable guide, Ono has started well, with Sungoliath unbeaten.
Fellow semi-finalists Yokohama Canon Eagles have experienced Springbok scrumhalf Faf de Klerk back in harness, after
he missed much of this year’s league with injury, while centre Jesse Kriel has also reported ready to go, following an
outstanding international campaign where he helped the Springboks reinforce their number one world ranking.
Kwagga Smith, who was also scrubbed for much of last season due to injury, is back and will again skipper Shizuoka Blue
Revs, with ex-All Black Charles Piutau alongside as the pair seek to lift the competition’s serial heartbreakers, who have
lost 14 matches by 10 points or less since League One began.
Despite the departure of Wales fullback Liam Williams, the return of hooker Malcolm Marx, after he missed the Spears’
unsuccessful title defence due to a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament, will have given everybody associated with the
Funabashi Bay club an extra spring in their step: understandable given the Springboks’ record of 25 tries from 29
appearances in the orange jersey.
Ex-Harlequins coach Tabai Matson and All Black scrumhalf TJ Perenara are the notable newcomers at Ricoh Black Rams
Tokyo, the pair tasked with pushing the club up the table after they flirted with relegation last term.
Mie Honda Heat had a similar experience, and ex-Italy coach Kieran Crowley will be hoping to have Los Pumas centurion
Pablo Matera available for a full campaign, after the 31-year missed most of last term, arriving just in time to score four
tries against Shuttles Aichi in the first leg to help his side survive in The Replacement Battle.