If you are looking for a little hint of Eddie Jones’s lingering influence on Japanese rugby, have a read of what the flanker Masakatsu Nishikawa had to say about the England pack he will be playing against on Saturday.
Nishikawa said he was not too familiar with the two rookie back-rowers, Mark Wilson and Zach Mercer, but it did not matter because “we just need to smash them whoever is on the field”.
Jones recently promised his team will “physically smash” Japan. Nishikawa was happy to throw it right back at his former coach. Then he promised to “emotionally smash” Jones’s England team too, just for good measure.
“I know Eddie, because he was my club coach for two years in Japan,” Nishikawa said. “So I know he’s being half serious and half just taking the piss.” Nishikawa is 5ft 11in and 14st. It was not clear exactly how serious he was being himself but he and his teammates do seem to have inherited something of Jones’s sense of humour. Jones had also told them to “go to the temple and pray”. Asked whether he felt intimidated by this, the wing Akihito Yamada offered only a deadpan “yes” and then added, “there is no temple here” in Teddington, so there is not much he can do about it.
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Yamada and Nishikawa are two of eight changes Jamie Joseph has made to the team who lost 69-31 to the All Blacks in Tokyo two weeks ago. “We have some injuries back at home, which hasn’t helped but I am confident in terms of how we have prepared this week,” Joseph said. “The guys are very aware of what is coming. They all watched the Test against New Zealand. We think this is going to be a different game, first there isn’t going to be any rain, so it is going to be good for us.
“The fact England are targeting us physically is no secret. It hasn’t changed our approach but we have to take that from them and throw something back. Some of our players are smaller, so we have to play our game differently because we have smaller men. We have an approach where we hope we can keep the game quick, because sometimes size doesn’t work for you.” Yamada, who has scored 19 tries in 24 Tests, is a key part of the plan. Joseph said he would picked him to provide “speed and impact”.
Yamada, 33, is one of five players in the team who played in Japan’s famous victory against the Springboks in Brighton in 2015, along with the livewire scrum-half, Fumiaki Tanaka, who has also been recalled for this match.
Yamada “has more than enough experience to deal with what is coming at Twickenham,” Joseph said. “He loves the big stage and you don’t get a bigger stage than Twickenham. He is very confident in his own ability. He has got a big challenge defending against those big wingers of England but he is looking forward to it.”