Wily coach springs huge Kwagga Smith surprise

QUARTERFINAL PREVIEW: And then there were six.

With half of Division One having exited the competition, the six remaining get down to business from Saturday, sorting out who will be crowned Kings of the fourth edition of Japan Rugby League One.

The three previous winners remain in contention, although defending champions Brave Lupus Tokyo have history to overcome: neither of the first two titlists, Wild Knights or the Spears were able to defend their title.

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While the Spears will be in action on the opening weekend of the elimination rounds, it will be the Blue Revs and the Kobe Steelers who kick things off on the first day of an Osaka double-header, resuming their rivalry on Saturday after the Blue Revs’ 29-23 victory when the teams met last weekend.

As always, Springbok Kwagga Smith has been at the heart of the Blue Revs’ success, although their wily coach Yuichiro Fujii has pulled a surprise by naming his skipper and breakdown king on the bench, most likely in anticipation that the celebrated loose forward’s leadership and on-field presence will be vital at the game’s backend.

It’s a risk but one the formbook suggests could be a smart play.

That formbook is also against Dave Rennie and his Steelers team.

Twice previously in League One, teams have met in the play-offs after playing on two occasions during the regular season.

The team that won both games in qualifying went on to win the semifinal each time as well, with the Spears sweeping Tokyo Sungoliath aside two years ago.

Sungoliath were on the receiving end again last term when Brave Lupus won a hat-trick of Fuchu derbies.

The Spears and Brave Lupus each went on to win the title, although the new format for the finals will require Kubota, who finished third on the standings, to negotiate an extra knock out match successfully if they are to resume their position on the throne.

The Steelers might have lost the last tussle, but Rennie does have some aces to play, with the former Wallaby boss having made seven changes from his last combination, the biggest of which is the reinstatement of skipper Brodie Retallick.

The All Black lock has been a driving force behind his side’s return to the play-offs for the first time since the Steelers’ last title-winning season in 2018, both for his leadership, but also his potency near the goal-line, which has yielded 10 tries, the second most by a forward in the competition.

The Blue Revs have also uncovered a try-scoring ‘whiz’ though, with scrumhalf Shuntaro Kitamura last week scoring the 14th try of his remarkable rookie season, to take over from winger Malo Tuitama (11) as the team’s leading try-scorer.

The season’s surprise performers, after having finished the first three editions of League One in eighth, the Blue Revs ended the regular season fourth, and an impressive 12 points clear of fifth placed Steelers.

Along the way, they uncovered exciting new talent like Kitamura and boom winger Valynce Te Whare – whose length of the field tries will be talked about long after the season ends – but have also shown they are not daunted by reputations, having twice bested champions Brave Lupus, while also taking down the Wild Knights.

With just eight points having separated the teams across their previous 160 minutes of ‘combat’, a thrilling start to the play-off season seems a good bet.

Unpredictability is the order of the day for Sunday’s second quarterfinal, with the Spears having tied 26-26 with Sungoliath first up, before overpowering their rivals 30-10 last month.

Despite missing direct entry to the semifinals, the Spears’ performance to date has not been too dis-similar from their title run two years ago.

They lost just once that season.

There have only been two defeats this time, and both were close, going under by two points in their first meeting with the Wild Knights before drawing the second, while just four points separated themselves and Brave Lupus in a 31-27 defeat.

A two-time Super Rugby-winning coach with the Pretoria-based Bulls, alongside his League One success, Spears coach Frans Ludeke knows how to win sudden-death matches.

He also knows how to avoid defeat to Sungoliath, having lost just once from the last seven meetings, after an extraordinary run where Suntory won 14 games in a row before the Spears finally beat them in the Top League/League One era during the title-winning 2022-23 season.

At the other end of the spectrum, Sungoliath’s first-term coach Kosei Ono has endured a bumpy ride, ultimately finding a way into the play-offs, but a whopping 29 points behind the Spears on the regular-season table.

It took Sungoliath five matches to register a first win, although they could easily have had it a week earlier when a missed conversion in the 80th minute denied them against the Spears.

It was not coincidental that the back-to-back wins against Verblitz and the Black Rams Tokyo that got Sungoliath across the line and into the play-offs came when international stars Sam Cane and Cheslin Kolbe hit their stride after underwhelming campaigns.

Cane scored two tries in the 45-28 win over his former All Black boss Steve Hansen’s Verblitz, while Kolbe gorged himself during the following week’s 43-34 success in the ‘must-win’ match against the Black Rams, helping himself to 28 points, which included two stunning tries.

The All Black and the Springbok will have to be up to the mark again if the regular season’s sixth-placed finishers are to have any chance of causing one of the upsets of the season.