Mick Cleary: Fun is in the air but lots of drama still to come

Fans pose for a photo outside the stadium prior to the Rugby World Cup 2019 game between Japan and Russia. Photo / Getty Images

Opinion

COMMENT

The best sporting events are about more than tries, goals and runs, indispensable as they might be to a successful tournament. They are also about a mood, a spirit, a memory.

In that regard, Japan 2019 is already shaping up to emulate Nelson Mandela's Rainbow Nation World Cup in 1995, or New Zealand's near-nervous breakdown as they almost blew it in 2011, or Jonny Wilkinson's drop for glory on a rainy night in Sydney in 2003.

All those tournaments had soul or drama or both. After a flit of four games in four days and then south to Kobe for Thursday's England match, packed into tubes and trains, a tale of jostling crowds and good cheer, with a blue-and-yellow liveried 13,000-strong volunteer army ready and willing to help add to your three-word lexicon of Japanese, it is heartening to report that this World Cup is in fine fettle.

There is fun in the air, locals tuning in not only to a newish sport but also to a whole new way of life. Good luck to the announcer on the Sapporo airport-link train requesting "no talking" in the carriages. Yes, drink is involved and, mercifully after gloomy prognostications of beer being in short supply, there is plenty of it. The rugby is not bad either, unless you are Scottish.

The stadiums in Japan are a mix of adapted baseball venues, regular football grounds, space-age ventures such as the indoor, slide-the-pitch-in Sapporo Dome, that staged three matches in the 2002 football World Cup and played witness to David Beckham's penalty winner against Argentina, to the towering stands of the City of Toyota Stadium where Arsene Wegner cut his managerial teeth. Kobe's Misaki Stadium, with its folding roof, feels like a greenhouse but has rugby in its soul.

The Steelers are the local team and there are bars in town dedicated to rugby. Attendances are buoyant across the board and noise levels excitable, nowhere more so than at the Kamaishi Recovery Memorial Stadium which provided a poignant backdrop to the first shock of the tournament, Uruguay's 30-27 win over Fiji.

There are plenty of activities vying for your attention in Tokyo, be it the Kill Bill location of Gonpachi restaurant in Rappongi or discreet whisky bars tucked down alleyways. Above all, though, there is high-end sport to grip the senses and the likes of Japan's hat-trick hero, Kotaro Matsushima, all-action All Black flanker Ardie Savea, line-busting Manu Tuilagi, sidestep-in-a-phonebox Springbok wing Cheslin Kolbe or every one of those Uruguay heroes.

There is much more to come in Japan and, for that, we can be very grateful.