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MISSED PENALTY! England 0 – 0 Japan (Naoto Saito)
4 mins. More poor discipline from England as Earl is caught not rolling away at a ruck forty metres out. The Japan captain fancies it but he pulls the attempt at the posts left.
2 mins. Japan settle in to their familiar fast-paced handling game, which George Martin is too keen to try to prevent and gives penalty away. McCurran misses touch with his kick, with the return kick from England too deep and shepherded dead by Matsunaga.
Kick Off!
Ref Craig Evans blasts on his whistle and Marcus Smith boots us underway
The teams are out in the dusky early evening light, music blasting and lights flashing before we settle in for the anthems.
Pre match reading
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Teams
First choice all over the park for England of players who are available. Steve Borthwick wants a proper win here.
Japan are without Warner Dearns, who is banned for four matches. There’s also no Harumichi Tatekawa so Nik McCurran comes in at stand-off.
England: 1 Ellis Genge, 2 Jamie George (captain), 3 Will Stuart; 4 Maro Itoje, 5 George Martin; 6 Tom Curry, 7 Sam Underhill, 8 Ben Earl; 9 Jack van Poortvliet, 10 Marcus Smith; 11 Ollie Sleightholme, 12 Henry Slade, 13 Ollie Lawrence, 14 Tommy Freeman; 15 George Furbank.
Replacements: 16 Luke Cowan-Dickie, 17 Fin Baxter, 18 Asher Opoku-Fordjour, 19 Nick Isiekwe, 20 Chandler Cunningham-South; 21 Harry Randall, 22 Fin Smith, 23 Tom Roebuck.
Japan: 1 Takato Okabe, 2 Mamoru Harada, 3 Shuhei Takeuchi; 4 Sanaila Waqa, 5 Epineri Uluiviti; 6 Kanji Shimokawa, 7 Kazuki Himeno, 8 Faulua Makisi; 9 Naoto Saito (captain), 10 Nicholas McCurran; 11 Jone Naikabula, 12 Siosaia Fifita, 13 Dylan Riley, 14 Tomoki Osada; 15 Takuro Matsunaga.
Replacements: 16 Seunghyuk Lee, 17 Yukio Morikawa, 18 Keijiro Tamefusa, 19 Daichi Akiyama, 20 Tevita Tatafu, 21 Ben Gunter; 22 Shinobu Fujiwara, 23 Yusuke Kajimura.
Preamble
So we reach the final chapter of England’s current season of mists and mellow fruitlessness. An Autumn of testing themselves against the best of the southern hemisphere – plus Australia – and coming up short. Cue many pained dissections and death notices about the state of the game its birthplace, all of which are overstated.
Steve Borthwick’s team have had a tough little run of fixtures and have lost them narrowly, the team is broadly settled, the attacking gameplan is maturing and a new defensive system is bedding in. They should have won against Australia, probably, but this is no reason to go into full meltdown. Things are broadly fine and will continue to be so.
That said, it is helpful that they can sign-off this run of matches playing Japan at home with the clear probability of a comfortable win this brings; hence Borthwick has gone with a fully loaded squad for the match. But a decent and convincing win it must be against the returning Eddie Jones’s charges. A creaking November victory over the Brave Blossoms in 2018 during Jones’s England tenure increased the mutterings about his suitability for the job and England’s current man in charge will be keen to avoid yet another “explain yourself!” post-match interview to head into the long winter gap prior to the Six Nations.