Japan bid to return to the top table

Womens rugby in Japan has a long and proud history. They were there at the start, long before the rest of the Asian nations caught up with them.

There were Japanese teams at the first world rugby festival - Rugbyfest in 1990 - and national team took part in the first two World Cups. However, then their growth slowed considerably. With the game expanding across the world, Japanese women's rugby stood still. Asia was only given one place for the 1998 tournament and that place went to Kazakhstan. This came as a shock to the JRU but as they had played no internationals in intervening four years it was perhaps not a surprise to the rest of the world.

Though they returned for the 2002 tournament (beating Samoa in a qualifier) and performed well, beating the Netherlands and losing narrowly to Ireland, the lack of opportunities to play international rugby was and remains Japans greatest problem.

In seven years since that last World Cup appearance, Japan have played only eight internationals fewer than any other major international team. In the meanwhile the rest of the world has not stood still and Japans lack of experience that was shown up on their recent tour to British Columba where a full-strength national team lost to club side Burnaby Lake in a warm up game before being heavily defeated by the provincial team 38-0. These were not results on which to build confidence, though they will have shown the coaching staff a wide raft of areas to work on.

So, next week Japan begin their latest bid to return to the top table of world rugby with a semi-final against Singapore. And they will start as favourites they beat Singapore in the Asian championships in 2007 and 2008. However, last time it was close only 17-10 - and, whereas Japanese rugby has barely developed since 1994, Singaporean rugby is expanding rapidly this will be their third international in a month. With home advantage who is to say that Singapore cannot do to Japan what Sweden did to Spain and Italy in the European qualifier?

And even if Japan do win, there is still most likely Kazakhstan to deal with in the final, should they overcome Hong Kong. Japan have never beaten Kazakhstan and unfortunately there are no signs that this is likely to change unless a major reversal in fortunes occurs.

Japan factfile:

First international: 1991World Cup Finals: 1991, 1994, 2002 (best finish: 8th (1994))

Playing record:- All games (1991-2009):