KEY POINTS:
It might be a good idea to make a mental note never to play poker with John Kirwan. The former All Black and current coach of Japan doesn't betray any emotion other than sincerity when he predicts a Japanese team could win a Super Rugby title in
10 years.
He says it matter of factly, and there is no pause to crack a smile and say 'gotcha'. He's for real.
It's hard to know whether to take him seriously. Japan has been a developed rugby nation for more than four decades and have an enormous player base and corporate support. Surely, if they were ever going to arrive on the world stage, they would have done it by now?
Kirwan accepts that, in the last 20 years or so, not enough has been done to convert the potential into performance. What's encouraging him now is the continued growth of the Japanese club competition and the subsequent player development systems.
"We have got the players now and you are probably looking 10 years before we win it," he says, putting a timeframe on how long it would take a Japanese team to find their feet in Super Rugby should the invite come.
"The players are out there. You just have to go looking. We are trying to develop our high performance network so you get a 20-year-old fully developed. They start playing rugby when they are 13 in Japan and we need to get them then and develop them."
Kirwan might just be letting his passion for his role and excitement about the future run a little too far. He is on much firmer ground in his assertion that Asia is the obvious market for the IRB and Sanzar to develop.
The former Auckland wing is in Hong Kong as an ambassador for HSBC, the banking conglomerate pumping serious cash into Asian rugby in the hope it will lead to lucrative sponsorship deals.
The bank, even in these tough times, is a seriously big player as are many of the companies financially supporting Japanese rugby.
The clout and strength of the economy has everyone in this part of the world convinced that if rugby seriously wants to develop new super powers, Japan must be the starting point.
"They have had their credit crunch. They had it 15 years ago so if anyone's going to come out of this quickly, it is going to be us. The game is strong. Four years ago there were 60,000 people turning up to university games. Have we done our job properly over the last 10 years? No? Are we starting to do it properly now? Yes.
"We have seen a 30 per cent increase to 120,000 players. And the last thing is that we have the biggest companies in the world supporting our rugby teams. NEC have a rugby team. Ricoh have a rugby team. Toshiba have a team.
"Toyota's advertising budget is $1bn per year. We need to get back in touch with the public. That is all we have to do. The game has everything but the people just haven't tuned up. In 1987, I played up there and we filled the stadium and then soccer came in and took a lot of the support away."
One of the more obvious ways to accelerate the growth of rugby in
Japan is to award it the hosting rights to the 2015 World Cup. There is widespread dismay that the 2011 World Cup is coming to New Zealand.
That dismay sits a little closer to the surface in a place like Hong Kong which feels the whole of Asia missed a golden opportunity. It is not necessarily the decision that irks, it is the way in which it was reached.
Was there a strategic plan in mind, or was it a political decision in which the old boy network looked after a favoured son? Kirwan's tone suggests it's the latter. He, and many others who promote the game in Asia, have heard plenty of inspired speeches from IRB executives in the past few years and Sanzar bosses in the last few days.
"I think that if the real reason is promotion of the game then the biggest thing that needs to happen is that Japan host a World Cup.
"If they get that then we can build a programme to make sure it is a great World Cup from a financial point of view, which I think is a catchcry at the moment.
"But why would I want New Zealand to play Australia in Tokyo? I think they should play Japan in Tokyo. I firmly believe that, in the November tests, the top eight nations have an obligation to play down - so that they must play a team ranked between 11-20. We need pathways."
It is unlikely Kirwan will still be in Japan should they win the hosting rights to the 2015 World Cup. He is off contract in 2011 and that will be decision time. He lives a transient life at the moment, spending 10 days at home in Italy then 10 days in Japan.
For the time being it is all working well. There is also so much optimism sweeping through the Japanese game right now that Kirwan is convinced he will be at the helm during a momentous time.
He might be right. New Zealand is running out of ways to keep leveraging cash from the All Black brand. The constant tests abroad will soon lose its appeal and the host nations might start to see through the naked commercialism when the game in their country doesn't actually take off as a result of seeing Richie McCaw and Dan Carter in the flesh.
By 2011 the optimism might have vanished if the promises made to boost the Asian market prove as hollow as they have in the past.
Still, at least if Kirwan does jack it all in, he could think about a career as a professional poker player.
