England v Australia: From rugby zeros to conquering heroes in 80 minutes

UNDER FIRE: England captain  Chris Robshaw and coach Stuart Lancaster

A WEEK of recriminations over England's humbling by Wales has done nothing to ease the pressure on skipper Chris Robshaw and his beleaguered Rugby World Cup troops.
The Twickenham inquest has merely cranked up the pressure on the men the media and the fans hold responsible for the sweet chariot crashing on the final bend. And if they shoot themselves in the foot again against Australia tomorrow (Saturday), Robshaw and coach Stuart Lancaster could well find themselves travelling home with their opponents. To Botany Bay.
If England's fickle fans have not already gunned down the suffering sheriffs, that is.
One of the starkest after-match contrasts between St George and the conquering Dragons was the reaction of the ostensibly 'British' media to Wales's 28-25 victory. In their overseas edition, the nation's top-selling tabloid scarcely gave Sam Warburton's wounded heroes credit for their unexpected second-half comeback. Instead, Welsh, Scottish and Irish expat readers had to endure five pages in The Sun on England's demise, two of which were devoted to former captain Will Carling sticking the knife into Robshaw and Lancaster.

Those looking for a tribute to the injury-decimated Welsh's unlikely victory at England HQ by had to settle for a few short paragraphs on their mouting injury problems plus assistant coach Sean Edwards' revelation of just how much the result meant to everyone in the Principality.
Edwards, once a never-say-Dai English rugby league hero, said: “At Sunday mass, the priest came out and put his hands in the air to celebrate. That's when you know you are making a difference to the nation.''
Carling's condemnation of England's decision to go for a match-winning try rather than salvage a point from a 28-28 draw is rich, coming as it does from a man whose decisions, by his own confession, cost England the 1990 Grand Slam.
Had Robshaw's spurning of a three-point penalty produced the last-gasp victory he and his team were aiming for, the media would have him up alongside Martin Johnson today as an England all-time legend. And Lancaster would be licking his lips at the prospect of emulating Sir Clive Woodward, the coach who led the nation to the 2003 World Cup.
Beat Australia, as Woodward and his captain Johnson did in the 2003 World Cup Final, and last weekend's cock-up will in just 80 minutes be completely forgiven, if not forgotten.
Regardless of yesterday's Wales v Fiji result, England can still make it to the knockout stages. But it will take a monumental effort to beat a Wallabies team that beat the mighty All Blacks in a Bledisloe Cup match in Sydney just a few weeks ago.
Until Wales replaced them this week, the Wallabies were officially ranked No.2 in the world behind the All Blacks. Michael Chieka's men will have just one target at Twickenham tomorrow – and that is to achieve the equivalent of what their cricketing countrymen failed to do this summer.
By putting the boot into the ashes of English rugby.

Japan's rest-case scenario

THE challenge of peaking twice in just four days proved too much for rugby's greatest giant-killers – much to the delight of a Scotland team who caught poor Japan on the rebound at Gloucester last week.
It was quickly apparent that a fresh Scottish side playing their first game of the tournament would be too great an obstacle for the shock conquerors of mighty South Africa.
Scotland's 45-10 victory also highlighted the unfairness of a system that gives some teams up to three days more rest between games than others.
Ironically, England have had the best deal of all – with at least a week between each of their three games so far.
Their conquerors Wales, on the other hand, were given just five days to recover before facing the physical might of Fiji last night (Thursday) with the longest list of injuries in the competition.Japan suffered more than any other nation, their 96-hour recovery period after the Springboks match also involving a venue switch from Brighton to Gloucester.
All of which makes a powerful case for the organisers of the next Rugby World Cup in Japan to balance the recovery time of all competing nations.
The hosts of RWC 2019 certainly won't argue with that one.

Football beware! Rugby's rising sons have sparked a sporting revolution

IT is arguably the biggest giant-killing act in sporting history – but Japan's Rugby's World Cup slaying of mighty South Africa was more than that. It was the ultimate game-changer, a result that introduced the public to global sport's Brand of the Rising Sons.

While football remains the most popular ball game on the planet, the emergence of Japan as a major rugby union force signals a huge breakthrough for the oval-ball code.

Yes, the Beautiful Game is being threatened by Beauty and the East.

Forget the 45-10 hammering the Oriental upstarts took from Scotland in Gloucester on Wednesday. The bigger, fresher Tartan troops were always favourites against a team weary from their history-making exertions four days earlier.

Full of  Eastern Promisee: Japan's Rugby World Cup heroes celebrate victory against South Africa

It was the South Africa result that put down the marker for the future of the game at world level.

In the words of Japan coach Eddie Jones, the man who steered Australia to the 2003 World Cup Final, “With an Asian team beating a top-tier country, that really makes it a global sport.”

Football remains No.1 with the public thanks largely to a complex coaching net that has elevated the top 50 or so nations to a level where their international teams are all capable of beating each other. The scene is changing, however, amid the chaos of Sepp Blatter's corrupt crew and FIFA's continuing refusal to adopt new technology that rugby, tennis and cricket have been utilising for a decade.

Rugby has long held the moral high ground when it comes to respect for officialdom and use of technology to ensure that try-scoring and disciplinary decisions are always correct. Professional leagues thrive in all the major rugby nations, with sponsors queuing up and the lure of big money attracting the world's best players. And crowds at top rugby Premiership games in England attract crowds of Manchester United and Arsenal proportions.

Until last weekend, the main thing holding a genuine popularity challenge to football back was the absence of a meaningful rugby presence beyond the traditional hotbeds of the British Isles, France, Australasia, South Africa, Argentina and, to a lesser degree, Italy.

The qualification process for RWC 2015 involved no fewer than 83 nations, the majority of them rugby's equivalent to European football's newest whipping boys, Gibraltar.

Gibraltar beating England in the World Cup finals? Pure fantasy, of course. Yet that is what Japan effectively achieved by beating the Boks with a bit-part team made up of physical midgets and journeymen pros from overseas who qualify for Empire status on residential grounds.

In fairness, Japan's rugby minnows weren't exactly devoid of professional assistance. The game has long been hugely popular in the Land of the Rising Sun, and a coaching team led by former Wallabies chief Jones and ex-England captain Steve Borthwick knew exactly what was required to make the team genuinely competitive.

Way back at RWC 1991, I remember Japan's charismatic manager Shiggy Kono lamenting after a World Cup defeat at Murrayfield at the physical limitations of his players. “Our backs are as good and as quick as any other nation,'' said the man who claimed to be his country's only failed kamikaze pilot. “The problem is finding Japanese players who are physically as big and tall as those in the leading rugby nations.''

London-educated Kono, who died in 2007, reckoned he was such a bad pilot that his wartime kamikaze unit bosses refused to send him on a mission. A mission where survival would have been as likely as the Japanese rugby team beating the 1995 and 2007 world champions.

Even with the absorption of foreign-born forwards, Japan's tallest player at the World Cup is a mere 6ft 4in – that's four or five inches shorter than the average Bok, Kiwi or English second-row giant.

Japan can still qualify for the quarter-finals for the first time despite the defeat by Scotland - but even if they miss out, no-one can take from them the fact they achieved the unachievable.

The little big men have also lifted the game of rugby into a new era of global competition.

PS to England as they prepare for Saturday's Twickenham showdown with 2011 semi-finalists Wales. Beware of wounded Dragons...they are likely to catch fire and reduce you to cinders.

St George is still recovering from the burns inflicted by Wales in the 2013 Six Nations championship. In case anyone has forgotten, the written-off Taffs thrashed England by a record 30-3 margin and went on to lift the European crown for the fourth time in eight years.

Saturday's confrontation has a familiar look about it. England start hot favourites with Wales decimated by injuries to key playmakers Lee Halfpenny, Rhys Webb and long-term casualty Jonathan Davies.

The game will be a doddle for Stuart Lancaster's sweet chariot, predict the fans in the white shirts and rose-coloured spectacles.

Bu will it – particularly following the loss of England's midfield try machine Jonathan Joseph?

Wales, for all their injuries, feel they can exploit a juggled English back line which includes relatively untried rugby league convert Sam Burgess replacing Joseph. With Lancaster also handing George Ford's No.10 jersey to Owen Farrell, the Welsh will feel they can exploit what they see as England's soft midfield under-belly.

Have Farrell, Burgess and St George gut what it takes to slay the Dragon? Tune in to ITV at 9pm Spanish time on Saturday to find out.