Paris, France, July 22, 2024: Japan’s men’s rugby sevens team must break with tradition and be prepared to take risks if they are to make an impact at Paris 2024.
This is the view of Japan’s British coach, Simon Amor, whose team faces a daunting Pool A opener against the mighty New Zealand on Wednesday, July 24 (6pm) in the magnificent setting of the Stade de France.
Taking risks invites mistakes – and this goes against the culture of the Japanese people, as Amor explained to the Olympic Information Service.
“With the Japanese culture, pride and shame is big. Making mistakes is a difficult one for them because they are very proud of representing their families, their companies, their country.”
After opening their campaign against Tokyo 2020 silver medallists New Zealand, Japan will play Ireland on the same evening and then South Africa the following afternoon.
Amor knows they must play a high-risk game to cause an upset – and feels the players are ready to face this cultural and sporting challenge.
“We have done a lot of work these past two years about them understanding how the right type of mistakes are okay,” Amor added.
“What’s important is that we don’t hold back from making mistakes because the easy thing to do in sevens is you don’t do anything. You just sit there and take your foot off the gas. But you’ll never achieve anything.”
The head coach feels the players have become more relaxed and are playing with more freedom than before – and are prepared to think and play outside of the box.
“It’ll be high risk and a fair bit of chaos,” Amor admitted.
“What you have got with Japan is that the footwork across the board is unbelievable. The footwork and the agility. The idea is how can we create one-on-one space for people. Then we will create a lot of difficulties.”
His players are in full agreement. Powerful back Josua Kerevi said: “Ever since Simon has got on board we’ve grown not only as rugby players but as human beings. Now we’ve got to do crazy things. We have to do the extraordinary to get extraordinary results.”