Tuesday training and Wednesday game day

Sorry - no photos today - the USB port on the PC in hotel foyer doesn`t seem to work.

Tuesday saw us training at the excellent facilities of the Kobe Steelers. Artificial field again - boys becoming quite spoilt and reckon we should have them at home. George argues that they would pay for themselves in no time - no irrigation, no mowing, no washouts - he's an economic wiz until you ask him where we'll get the up-front cash - still working on that one!!! The boys were lucky enough to have internationals all over the place to take a short session and answer questions about Rugby in Japan and further afield. We had Sean Hedger (Kobe head coach, and ex-Brisbane boy), Adam Wallace-Harrison (ex-Red and Force), Royce Willis (ex-All Black), Tinis Delport (ex-Springbok), Pierre Holler (Tongan international) and Josh Blakey (ex- Australian 7s player)、plus our own Glenn Panoho and Terry Morrison, all helping out.

The boys were then let loose upon the restaurants and malls of Kobe. The boys quickly learnt some of the traps of touring, as some were charged a service surcharge for the public holiday. They all came back with great stories of their meals though, and this evening was a frenzy of "Where did you get that stuff last night?", before descending upon the town again (although some of the boys have chosen to satisfy their Maccas cravings).

Kobe is different to the other cities we've visited so far. The re-build of the city after the big quake of '94 allowed them to have a more organised CBD, with big wide streets. The malls are huge - the one we took the boys to last night went for 3 city blocks,and then there were other malls on the adjoining blocks - huge!

The boys took on Joshua Gakuen school today. We always knew it would be a tough ask for the boys, as this school has been National champions for 8 of the last 10 years. They were extremely well-drilled, fast and tough. The 14s started like wildfire, with Tama slicing through the backline, to grubber past the fullback to score right in front. But this either lulled our boys into a false sense of security, or woke up the Japanese team, as the run of play quickly went to the Gakuen school. Despite some great defence from David G(who took out the SBW award) and a man of the match performance from Jack R, we went down 21 - 7. The boys were disappointed and know they can play better - they are keen to avenge this loss at our final game

Here's Elliott for his take on the First XV game.

Another tough day for the boys as we were up against some of the toughest competition since we played Shore's First XV from Sydney. Their backline was extremely well-drilled and they attacked our line with sheer speed and power, continuously pinning us deep in our own territory, resulting in us losing control of most aspects of the game. Although the result was not in our favour, I am proud of the way the boys kept at it even though we were on the backfoot for more then 70 percent of the time. Zhao played well, putting on some big hits and running hard as usual, winning the SBW award. Blake turned out yet another tradesman-like man-of-the match performance. Tommy showed incredible poise under pressure and kept his head in the game setting up some brilliant plays. Another outstanding player was Jedd, who once again proved to be a weapon against the Japanese defence. Al got his first try of the year when Jedd broke the line and delivered a nice pass to me and I then popped the ball to Al, resulting in a try. The boys are now preparing to play against another formidable opponent this coming weekend in Tokyo.
Elliott

Off to Mt Fuji tomorrow - hopefully we'll get some photos to you then.

Com Ban Wa!