Japan Rugby League One 2023-24 Round Seven Review

Outta Sight, Wild Knight!

The gap between the Saitama Panasonic Wild Knights and the rest is widening at the top of the Japan Rugby League One point’s table but the Chiefs’ conquerors from The Cross Border Rugby had to work hard to extend their unbeaten record after a 24-20 win over third-placed Tokyo Suntory Sungoliath today.
Sungoliath have not beaten their arch-rivals since the game resumed after the Covid lockdown – a losing run which includes two finals – but while that sequence was ultimately extended to five, the prospect of an upset had appeared possible when Suntory turned around a three-point halftime deficit in two-minutes shortly after the break.
After Brave Blossoms centre Dylan Riley had scored against Sungoliath for the fifth game in a row to help the Wild Knights to a 13-10 lead at the midpoint, Suntory grabbed the initiative through a dropped goal by rookie flyhalf Mikiya Takamoto, which was backed up from the re-start by a movement that led to a try by Riley’s test teammate and midfield colleague, Ryoto Nakamura.
Takamoto’s conversion pushed the visitors out to a 20-13 lead but Suntory failed to score again, with Wild Knights fullback Ryuji Noguchi’s 56th minute try closing the gap to two points, before twin penalty goals by Brave Blossoms flyhalf Rikiya Matsuda, the second in injury time, finally confirmed Saitama’s seventh consecutive league win of the season, but the first in which they have been held below 40 points.
Matsuda, whose conversion and four penalty goals took his tally for the season to 88, ended the weekend as the competition’s leading point-scorer, 14 ahead of Takamoto, who is tied with Kobe’s Bryn Gatland on 74.
While denied the honours, third-placed Sungoliath gained a deserved bonus point from their battling performance, which was achieved despite the absence of two of their three foreign capped test stars, All Black backrower Sam Cane, and Argentine flyhalf Nicolas Sanchez.

Riley ended the afternoon as the league’s joint leading try-scorer thanks to his seventh five-pointer of the campaign, but Suntory winger Seiya Ozaki is just one behind, after the competition’s top try-scorer from last term scored the first of Sungoliath’s two tries.
The Saitama man has been joined at the top of the individual try-scoring standings by Toyota Verblitz winger Taichi Takahashi, who bagged a hattrick in today’s 54-7 win over Mie Honda Heat.
The 26-year-old, who bagged four tries playing for the Barbarians against Bristol in November, has scored in all but one of his five appearances this term, including five from the last two outings, which has taken his tally to 22 from just 26 games for Toyota in Japan Rugby League One.
It took until the 21st minute until Takahashi scored Toyota’s first points, as Honda initially threatened to make a game of it, but All Black scrumhalf Aaron Smith scored three minutes later – his third try since relocating to Japan – and the game already looked beyond the divisions’s tailenders by the time halftime arrived, with Verblitz ahead 19-0.
So it proved, although it again took Honda a while to crack once the game resumed, with 14 minutes elapsing before Takahashi’s second try got the scoring started.
It was the first of five tries for the locals in the second period, two of which were scored by Toyota’s inform winger, while Samoan-born second rower Isaiah Mapusua also grabbed a double after taking the field for the final half hour.
As well as heaping further misery on winless Honda, the bonus point win enabled Toyota to climb four places into one of the semi-final positions on the ladder, albeit having played a game more than eight of their rivals.
In Division Two, Urayasu D-Rocks returned to the top of the table after an 85-5 stroll against a disappointing Japan Steel Kamaishi Seawaves.
Led by a first half hattrick from winger Kai Ishii, and doubles from England-born ex-Bath second row Levi Douglas and former Sharks (South Africa) backrower Tyler Paul, D-Rocks were untroubled to collect the try-scoring bonus point they needed, finishing with six tries in each half as they put a sorry Seawaves outfit to the sword.
After trailing 43-0 at halftime, Kamaishi shipped a further 42 second half points, and only narrowly avoided the further indignity of being held scoreless, with flyhalf Kazushi Ochi’s 76th minute score sparing them of that fate.
The current round in the division will be completed on Saturday when third-placed NEC Green Rockets Tokatsu meet Kyushu Electric Power Kyuden Voltex.