April 13-14, 1996. Japan Sevens: Fiji

(Atlantis tournament #48)
Emil Signes
April 22, 1996
JUNE 17, 2013 (rev. July 25, 2013)

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Atlantis Stars & Stripes Jerseys in Tokyo
L to R: Emil Signes, John Flamish, Gabriel "Bull" Alonso, (hidden) Nick Bell, Dennis Peyroux, Adrian Scott, Tom Liddle,
Bob Davis, Bill Russell, David "Dixie" Dean, Kevin Gallant, Mike Coyner

Note of 2013: I couldn't find a Rugby Magazine article on the tournament, but this file is dated 4/22/96, so it was contemporary to the event (and maybe published in Rugby without me noticing). As noted in the article I made the trip two days after a hernia operation and still remember the painful flight and losing my voice after trying to run practices shouting from the sidelines. The cherry blossoms were nice, though.

Japan Sevens: Fiji 61 New Zealand 5 (!)

OK, you’ve seen the headline: now look carefully at the following “almost” round robin scores.

After 14-minutes (after the hooter but not the final whistle):
Korea 19 Fiji 17
Japan 24 Western Samoa 21

In the first game, the action continued after the hooter, when a Korean appeared to have the Fijian ballcarrier run into touch. But the touch judge didn’t see it that way, and Fiji snuck in to the Cup quarterfinals with a 24-19 victory. In the second, again after the whistle, Western Samoa knocked the ball on in front of nearly 20,000 spectators, in front of God, in front of everyone, in fact, except the referee. They then went on to move the ball 90 meters and defeat Japan 28-24.

Instead, therefore, of Fiji and Samoa looking forward to a Plate showdown, leaving the Cup more or less to New Zealand alone, Fiji snuck into the Cup and . . . well, you’ve seen the result in the headline.

Oh, yes, there was one more “almost” result:

13:45-minute score:      Japan 26 Australia 21 In the Plate semifinal between Japan and Australia, the upset-stopper actually occurred about 15 seconds before the hooter. Japan’s defender stupidly tried an ankle tap in goal when he could easily have held the attacker to a touchline try and probably a tie. Instead, Australia centered the ball and took a 28-26 lead. With the hooter sounded, the crowd was treated to a real “homer” decision: not only did the referee allow the kickoff, but even a scrum to Japan about 30 seconds later. Unfortunately it did not have the effect of letting Japan pull the game out; instead, Australia stole the ball and finished with a 33-26 victory.

That’s sevens! For those content to plod along in life, carefully and methodically taking down one obstacle after another, watching interminable grunt work finally bear fruit, 15s is a great sport. For those, however, who want to live on the edge, let it all hang out, experience feast or famine, be willing to let a bit of luck determine one’s fate now and then, be prepared for ultimate ecstasy or horrid agony, attach yourselves to sevens! (Those with a bent for the moderate can fiddle with 10s, I suppose.)

Japan Sevens ‘96

The fourth Japan Sevens tournament consisted of 8 Japanese corporate or university sides, and sixteen foreign sides, including Atlantis. Played in Japan’s main rugby-only site, Prince Chichibu Stadium, the tournament attracted about 20,000 people and appears headed for even more popularity in the future. Accommodations for teams were excellent, and fans were truly enthusiastic.

The weather was much colder than normal throughout the days of training preceding the tournament and on the first day (perhaps mid-40s and windy!), but Sunday warmed up to about 60 degrees with only a light breeze, perfect conditions for any variety of rugby.

The tournament, for the first time, signed on a marketing firm, Masters, whose spokesman at the event was Welsh legend Gareth Edwards, and Mr. Japanese rugby, Shiggy Konno, conceded that it was time to move the event itself, along with rugby, to professionalism.

Japan seems to be among the many rugby nations positioning themselves to jump into the gap that many perceive will appear when China takes control of Hong Kong back next year. Based on my observation, they’re heading in the right direction. They’re even learning to have fun in the stadium: by the end of the second day, not only was a wave instituted, but even waves traveling in opposite directions at the same time.

Round robin

Although all eight Japanese teams were seeded third in their bracket, three of them came in second in their pool. Although Toyota’s victory over Taiwan and Suntory’s 50-0 slaughter of Malaysia were not particularly surprising, Toshiba’s 31-10 thumping of Canada was. Combined with their 40-5 loss to France, Canada, a surprise Cup team two weeks before in Hong Kong, was now a surprise Bowl team in Japan.

Canada, it must be said, had only one of the 10 players that participated in Hong Kong remaining on their squad. This, however, was the case with most international teams: none, or nearly none, of the Hong Kong participants for Australia, New Zealand, France, Wales, Canada, Argentina, USA, took part in this tournament.

If the Canada / Toshiba game was an upset, then so was the Australia / Hong Kong game (28-21 to the colony), although Hong Kong, with its collection of imports, always seems to be on the threshold of knocking “powers” off. Argentina won the “toss up” game against the President’s VII, brought in to replace South Africa, a last minute casualty, 21-19.

The round robin results are shown in the accompanying table.

Bowl

It sure wasn’t easy -- they were trailing 17-7 with two minutes left in the semi-final against Sanyo, and squeaked out a thriller against Kobe Steel in the final, but Canada made up for a very poor performance on Saturday by coming out of the tournament as the Bowl Champions.

Plate

The Australia / Japan squeaker in the Plate semifinal has been commented on already, but Australia then turned it up a notch to defeat Korea by a relatively comfortable 33-19 score.

Atlantis: 1-2

Japan’s first victim in the Plate round was Atlantis, who gave the hosts a good game before giving up two last minute tries to make the score a larger than deserved 33-14. And while not seeking to make excuses for this loss, I must note that Japan’s excellent performances in this tournament were no exception -- in Hong Kong, on their way to the Bowl championship they held France to a 19-7 victory, were one try away from a Plate appearance, and then crushed all their Bowl opponents by a combined score of 138-31. Their traditional lack of size was made up for by Tongans Bruce Ferguson and Semi Taupeaafe (the latter played for Australia in the 1993 Sevens World Cup).

Atlantis squad. We had a respectable team, including guest player Gabriel “Bull” Alonso (Old Boys, Uruguay).

289	Gabriel "Bull" Alonso	British OB (Uruguay)
238	Nick Bell	NOVA
290	Mike Coyner	Washington
240	David Dean	NOVA
78	John Flamish	Phila/Whitemarsh
174	Kevin Gallant	Daytona
272	Tom Liddle	Life College
243	Dennis Peyroux	Life College
102	Bill Russell	Old Blue (NY)
215	Adrian Scott	Old Blue (NY)
	Bob Davis, manager
	Emil Signes, coach

We met in Long Beach on April 6, two days after I had a hernia operation, which left much of the coaching to captain Bill Russell. After two practices we were on the plane to Tokyo. Physically, it was not one of my most pleasure-filled tours.

Atlantis 21 Waseda University 17

This was one of those nightmare games, against a much weaker opponent that you can never put away. Sleeping through the first minute, Atlantis found itself down 7-0 when the speedy Waseda team took advantage of a turnover. The boys then started getting in gear with tries by Dennis Peyroux from a broken tackle, and hooker Tom Liddle on a “shield” play. Dixie Dean then made an incredible move near his own goal line, and ran 95 meters to score, the last 20 of them throwing move after move against a quicker opponent (which he had to do because of lack of support from six teammates who seemingly thought Dixie could outrun everybody in the world).

Atlantis never could put this one totally of reach, however, and Waseda scored in the last minute to make the game interesting for a second or two.

Atlantis 0 Wales 36

For a country that takes pains to declare how it doesn’t play sevens, Wales has become a better and better sevens country, and played excellently throughout the tournament. Atlantis made several breaks but seemed to finish everyone off with an ill-advised turnover.

Wales was rewarded for its new-found attention to sevens with a last minute 21-17 victory over Western Samoa in the Cup quarterfinal.

Atlantis 14 Japan 33

As I’ve indicated above, we actually played well in this game (not that I, nor any of us, is satisfied with “almost” rugby). The old “14 point play” came back to haunt us on two occasions. After winning the opening kickoff, Bull Alonso was shooting a gap when a mistimed scissors with Bill Russell -- that would have put him into a huge space -- spilled on the ground and put Japan ahead 7-0.

Later, with the score 19-7 Japan, Russell put in a long kick that Alonso recovered, shoveled back to Russell, who moved it along to Flamish for what would have been an easy try. The ball spilled to the ground, however, and Japan scored on the ensuing play. C’est la f*****g vie.

Atlantis tries were by Dean and Russell.

Cup round

Following a parade around the stadium, Wales began the Cup round with an exciting win over Western Samoa. New Zealand scored 28 points against Hong Kong before the latter put over a try in the last moment of the match for the first score against New Zealand in the tournament. Until the final, New Zealand’s point total stood at 176-7.

Argentina and Fiji both had difficult matches in their 28-19 and 26-12 defeats of Tonga and France, respectively.

In the semis, New Zealand cruised past Wales 24-0 while Fiji struggled a bit in their 26-12 win over Argentina.

And then the unbelievable happened.

The game began with a New Zealand haka. Instead of their usual cibi response, however, the Fijians settled for mocking the New Zealanders during the ritual, as if they knew something.

Two minutes later the score was 17-0 and Fiji never looked back. The only way to describe it was that Fiji was “in a zone” somewhere in outer space. The “perfect” game. New Zealand, hurt by a serious lack of pace, made a few breaks but all were run down by the flying Fijians even before they got to sweeper Serevi. Fiji even got all 10 players in before the game ended. Six of them scored tries.

Serevi missed 8 of his 11 conversion attempts; it could easily have been a 70-point game.

Although it’s true New Zealand didn’t have a strong side, it was very similar to the side that had held Fiji to a 22-21 victory 4 weeks earlier in Fiji.

If you were a New Zealand fan, this was just a game you had to shrug off.

Manasa Bari, with three tries (10 for the tournament) easily won the MVP honors.

New Zealand		Fiji
Scrimgeour	1	Tuikabe (2T)
John	2	Yalayala (2T)
Jones *	3	Tawake **

Tauiwi	4	Koroi (2T)
Karauna	5	Serevi (T, 3C)
Ralph (T)	6	Bainivalu *
Hamilton	7	Bari (3T) ***
* replaced by Smith		* replaced by Naikelekele (T)
** replaced by Doviverata
*** replaced by Tuilevu

Comments

As you might imagine, Tokyo is a very crowded and busy, yet clean and crime-free, city. What you might not have imagined is that hotel beers cost about $10, and that even in el cheapest bar in town-o, you are lucky to find them for $5. This meant a low consumption of alcohol for most, and as food prices were equally high, very little dining outside of our sponsored hotel meals.

As usual, teams traded like crazy after the tournament, and this year’s prize catch was Atlantis alternate jersey, our “stars and stripes” model, which was fetching New Zealand track suits for those that wanted them.

Fitness

I’ve conversed a lot with New Zealand sevens coach Gordon Tietjens about fitness, and based on these conversations and my own conjecturing, I have a vague idea at least of what their speed and endurance numbers are. We all know that speed is greatly to be desired in sevens, and some of my conclusions are a) at the international level, there’s not much place for anyone much slower than 5.0 over 40 yards (maybe a great creator or a big forward who runs a 5.1), b) average team speed should be faster than 4.75 (I’m willing to bet that Fiji’s is faster than 4.6, possibly pushing 4.5), and c) endurance as measured by bleep test results should average at least high level 13, ideally 14-plus with no one less than level 12.

[Note of 2013: the Collegiate Sevens team I coached in 1998 that won the ITT 7s had an average 40-Y time of 4.62, and the US teams of the 2000s had average speeds in that range, far faster than these teams. Lord knows what the Fijians ran then, what they run now.]

USA Rugby East results over the last 5 years indicate that we (the East) have put out a team with average speed in the mid 4.8s and average bleep test results in the mid 12 range. I’m sure the 1996 Eagles at Hong Kong were significantly faster, probably fitter as well.

New Zealand tests all its players every time it assembles for a tour, and although Atlantis is merely an invitational side, I intend to do the same. I did it on this tour, and our averages were 4.87 in the 40, 12-11 in the bleep. We’ll get better. I promised myself that.

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