Japanese coach Eddie Jones might want to bottle whatever he told his team at halftime on Saturday night.
Down 25-9 at the break, Japan stormed out of the gate and outscored Canada 25-0 over the final 40 minutes to stun the hosts 34-25 in the first game of the Pacific Nations Cup tournament for both countries.
Jones is back coaching after suffering a stroke in October, but that didn’t stop him from letting loose on his players after a disappointing first half.
“I’ll tell you what, it wasn’t good for my blood pressure,” said the 54-year-old. “We thought we were fitter than them. We thought if we could just hang in there … we were just like a boxer on the ropes hanging on there. And if you get a chance to throw a jab, you throw it, and that’s what we were able to do.
“It takes a bit of courage to do that, so I’m really pleased with that from the boys.”
Japan ran ragged in the second half, busting through the line for a pair of tries that left Canadian head coach Kieran Crowley shaking his head.
“We really played well in that first half. We put pressure on them, we scored a couple really good tries,” he said. “Second half, we had a couple bad defensive errors from set plays, which you can’t afford to do. They were pretty soft tries, really.
“Japan just took it to us and they deserved to win with that second-half performance.”
Yoshikazu Fujita, Yu Tamura and Hendrik Tui had the tries for the visitors, who won their eighth straight overall, while Ayumu Goromaru kicked five penalties and added two converts.
John Moonlight, Ciaran Hearn and Taylor Paris had the tries for Canada, while James Pritchard added two penalties and two converts.
Japan started to claw its way back after halftime with a try in the 42nd minute as Fujita dove over the line, and after Goromaru missed the conversion, the score stood at 25-14.
Goromaru then kicked his fourth penalty of the night in the 56th minute to make it 25-17 before Tamura broke through the Canadian midfield untouched in the 63rd, with Goromanu’s conversion cutting the deficit to just one.
Clearly rattled, Canada could barely hold onto the ball and Tui completed the comeback by again busting through the line to make it 31-25 after Goromaru’s conversion.
Goromaru added to his point total by booting another penalty on the last kick of the game for the 34-25 final.
“We always knew we’d have to cope with the physical onslaught of Canada at home for the first 40,” said Jones. “If we wouldn’t have given away that try away (before) halftime we would have been pretty happy, but 25-9 at halftime, you’re battling to stay in the game.”
Despite watching his team get bossed around in the second half, Tyler Ardron — a 22-year-old from Lakefield, Ont., who plays for Ospreys in Wales and captained Canada for the first time — saw some positives.
