Today, there was a very rare rugby match, New Zealand vs Australia, at Tokyo Olympic Stadium.  The game was very interesting with a lot of present of 45,000 people.  New Zealand won.

This is a top rugby game of the world. I don’t know why this game was held in Japan instead of NZ or AUS.  Such a popular game should be a profitable game for either country, so I wonder why.

Anyway,  for Japanese fans, it’s very exciting to have experience to see such a top level game.

In Japanese rugby games, most popular game is a college game, Waseda University vs Meiji University.  This game gathers more than 50,000 present every year.  This game is certainly popular, while so, it’s a college game and the watchers are mostly students or graduates of both universities. This doesn’t simply show rugby popularity in Japan.

When I was a student, I loved rugby very much.  To my joy, at that time Frence National Team came to Japan for some test matches. Blanco, the strong fullback player,  was playing in the team, which made me excited to see. 

But the present people then were only 15,000 or so.  Japanese team also had a good standoff player,  Yuji Matsuo.  So the number of present was a little disappointing.

Compared to that time, the fans numbers are absolutely increasing.  Today’s fans really got excited to see 2 teams play although it’s not  a Japanese team game.

Japan got the world cup country right in 2019, or 10 years later.  We hope there would be more rugby fans in Japan then, and like today, I want to see them to get excited at good play scenes no matter which team is playing in front of them.