Kiwi coaches to reunite in JRLO Round 10
ROUND 10 PREVIEW: It’s the battle of the Kiwi coaches when Robbie Deans’ Wild Knights take on Dave Rennie’s Kobe Steelers in a crucial Round 10 JRLO encounter.
Robbie Deans and Dave Rennie go way back. Both are from the same playing era in New Zealand in the 1980s, when the Wild Knights boss was a star fullback for Canterbury in New Zealand’s National Provincial Championship, and the Kobe Steelers coach a rock of the Wellington midfield, while the coaching paths of the pair have trodden similar passageways.
After winning both the NPC and Ranfurly challenge Shield in charge of Canterbury, Deans won five Super Rugby titles with the Crusaders, prior to embarking on an international career which brought him to the Wild Knights via a stint which he ended as the longest-serving Wallaby coach.
Rennie coached both Wellington and Manawatu in the NPC, winning the title in 2000 when the side from New Zealand’s capital, boasting Christian Cullen and Jonah Lomu, edged the Deans-coached Canterbury in the Final, before later taking the Chiefs to Super titles back-to-back in 2012 and 2013.
International opportunity beckoned with Rennie following his compatriot into the Wallaby job via a stint with Glasgow Warriors in Scotland, before he landed with the Chiefs’ close associates in Japan, Kobe.
The two men faced each other for the first time in League One last season, with the Wild Knights coming from behind to win 28-18, ending Kobe’s four-match unbeaten run on what proved a pivotal turning point for Rennie’s men.
Kobe managed only three wins from their final seven as their semifinal bid faltered.
Twelve months on, the Steelers head to Kumagaya off the back of their best performance of the season, having flattened Verblitz 63-21 to move up to fifth on the point’s table.
They are still a massive 15 points behind the unbeaten Wild Knights though, with Deans’s outfit virtually assured of a play-offs spot already, despite the season having only just reached its halfway stage.
Despite issues at flyhalf where the Yamasawa brothers, Takuya and Kyohei, have been dogged by injury, the Wild Knights’ remain unbeaten, although both second-placed Brave Lupus Tokyo and Spears Funabashi Tokyo-Bay in third, departed Kumagaya having failed to take the gilt-edged opportunities they had created to crack Saitama’s almost impregnable fortress.
Just two points separate those sides ahead of Saturday’s vitally important date at Kagoshima, on which their hopes of a top two finish – and its’ Round One bye in the play-offs – may rest.
Although they played with fire, and narrowly avoided being burnt, during last weekend’s one-point thriller against Black Rams Tokyo, Todd Blackadder’s defending champions have lost just once, ironically to an opponent, Blue Revs, who the Spears put 62 points around in their most recent outing.
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Japan Rugby League One
The 2022-23 title-winners have also dropped just one game, separated from Brave Lupus by virtue of their 26-26 draw with Tokyo Sungoliath earlier in the campaign.
The fact that they have managed to reach this point without their leading point-scorer and backline maestro, Wallaby Bernard Foley, for parts of the campaign, and have added to their attacking firepower with the addition of one-cap All Black utility back Shaun Stevenson, reinforces the more rounded unit Brave Lupus title predecessors have become.
Sungoliath have also honed their overall capabilities since a slow start to the season forced them to wait until the fifth week to gain their first win.
Having sustained just one loss from the last seven, Kosei Ono’s charges are now threatening the top six, which they can break into if they beat Yokohama Eagles on Sunday.
While the five-time champions of Japan are on an upwards swing and welcomed back All Black loose forward Sam Cane to their ranks last time, the Eagles are flatlining, with three losses in as many weeks which will have their coach Keisuke Sawake hard at work trying to rectify their inefficiencies.
If anyone can, it is Sawake, who already has a pair of titles under his belt after guiding Saturday’s rivals to an unbeaten season in 2016-17 and backing that up with the 2017-18 championship, which he has followed up by taking his current charges to back-to-back semifinals, with a stint guiding the Sunwolves in between.
Although the Black Rams found themselves in last season’s relegation battle, which they negotiated comfortably, they did boost their confidence heading into the relegation series by bowling Sagamihara Dynaboars, which they will aiming to do again when the two sides open the Division One action in Saturday’s lunchtime kick-off.
For all of Brave Lupus’ class across the park last weekend, Black Rams skipper TJ Perenara was unquestionably the best player on the field, which will make him a marked man as the Dynaboars attempt to reset following back-to-back defeats.
Mie Heat achieved their reset against the Dynaboars two weeks ago, and after making it successive wins by upsetting the Eagles, the Pablo Matera-led side will be looking to capitalise on any psychological scarring that remains in the Shizuoka camp following their dramatic collapse against the Spears.
While Blue Revs winger Malo Tuitama remains the joint-highest try-scorer in the section with 10, the 28-year-old has gone scoreless in the last two match days, and Blue Revs will be desperate to get the Brave Blossoms flyer started again, playing an opponent against whom he scored twice when the teams last met.
Although D-Rocks are bottom of the division, they can at least point to being more recently in the winner’s circle than their next opponent, with their sole win three weeks ago, whereas Verblitz have dropped their last five.
First season D-Rocks coach Greig Laidlaw has had his hands full endeavouring to help last term’s Division Two champions adjust to the higher grade, but losses by eight to Brave Lupus, and five last weekend against Sungoliath suggest his troops haven’t given up on avoiding the end-of-season relegation trap yet.
Beating the out-of-sorts Verblitz is an essential though, with the game equally important to Steve Hansen’s men, whose 42-point battering by Kobe won’t have done much for team morale.
While the absence of World Player of the Year Pieter Steph du Toit, and more recently Brave Blossoms skipper Kazuki Himeno, has hurt the cause, Verblitz have greater depth than most in the league, boasting more members of last year’s Brave Blossoms than any other club.
Unless performances and results improve, that statistic probably won’t be repeated when Eddie Jones assembles his next squad in June.
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