Ensuring fairness a priority for Japan in 2019 World Cup

Wifi and debit cards will work in Japan by 2019 – promise.

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Plenty of corporate speak, a little less by way of clear information.

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"Japan is most beautiful in autumn," Shimazu-san told us before revealing a translation of Dubliners by James Joyce.

World Rugby’s challenge is to crack through the outer shell of this somewhat indecipherable culture, to ensure a successful tournament they need deeply ingrained hierarchal structures to bow to some western common sense.

"There's been a long education period with these guys to get them to understand exactly what's involved in the hosting," said Alan Gilpin, the 2019 Tournament Director.

A week of “productive meetings” was how the cultural divide is currently being described. Some of these meetings can go on forever with neither party knowing what was actually decided.

Welcome to Nippon.

“The key thing from a World Rugby point of view is fairness,” said Gilpin without guaranteeing this will be achieved. “In 2015 I think there were one or two occasions where the tier two teams had their toughest two fixtures with the shortest turnaround time. We are trying to eradicate that in the match schedule. Easier said than done, as you can imagine.”

Japan, despite toppling the Springboks, had any chance of reaching the quarter-finals crippled by a four-day turnover and shift from Brighton to Gloucester before playing Scotland.

“That’s what we are working on.”

One confirmed change is England, New Zealand and Ireland will be forced to play midweek Pool games.

Economic model

“I think there is an acceptance now even by the broadcast stakeholders that you can’t put England and New Zealand just playing Saturday and Sunday.”

Otherwise, infrastructurally-speaking, and despite Tokyo 2020 feeling like the priority, the World Cup should be a success.

The €110 million tournament fee – guaranteed for instance by the Irish government ahead of 2023 – has, seemingly, been covered.

“Their economic model for hosting the tournament is different from what we have seen in the past,” said Gilpin.

"They have got very strong government support through Japan Sports Council, which is the government sporting arm. The interesting and slightly different thing compared to 2015 is that the local government and authorities and the cities own the venues. The nature of the venues being provided to the tournament, the financial structure around that is different to previous tournaments."

So, except for Joe Schmidt’s bugbear – the 80-minute round trip from “domiciles” to training – everything should be fine.

There are 70 training facilities long listed for Schmidt, Michael Cheika, Eddie Jones, Steven Hansen and Warren Gatland to squabble over when the schedule is confirmed in September.

Ireland, it seems, will not play Japan in the tournament opener at the Ajinomoto stadium. Hearts and minds, 127 million of them, need capturing. Even Scotland are not seen as a soft enough touch. We’ll see.