高校生対決・High school competition
数年前からゴールデンウイーク中に開催されるサニックスワールドラグビーユース交流大会の模様が先日テレビで放映された。 今年も「体格に優っている」外人チームが優勝したがそれ自体はどうでもいいです。 最も面白い点が南半球の参加チーム(ニュージーランド、オーストラリア、南ア)が全て大会の1ヶ月ほど前の今年の3月から練習開始しており、その間も週2回程度の練習しかしていない。 対戦する日本の強豪チーム(東福岡高、佐賀工業、常翔学園、桐蔭学園、京都成章高校、國學院久我山、など)のいずれもが基本的にオフのない状態で殆ど毎日、最低2時間(ひどい場合は4時間強)の猛練習していたにも拘わらず、南ア、オーストラリア、ニュージーランドのチームとの試合結果は東福岡がかろうじて引き分けた1試合以外は惨敗に近いものです。佐賀工業が12-75、桐蔭学園が16-52と3-41、京都成章が12-47、國學院久我山が5-45, 東福岡が6-26という具合です。予選は全て20分ハーフで、決勝ラウンドは25分ハーフ。 だけど、相手チームが1ヶ月ほどの練習でこの大差を付けているにも拘わらず、インタービューでは練習やシーズンの違いについての質問がゼロ。 全てが「外人がでかい、外人が早い、外人がああ、外人がこう、外人、外人、外人、外人、外人、外人、外人、外人、」に終始していた。 あたかも世界の常識と日本の常識の間にこれだけの差があることを知りたくない、知られたくないという雰囲気だった。 情けない。 世界の常識にここまで目をつむりながらこれでワールドカップを開催するのか。 頑張りなさいね、君たち。 A couple of days ago, I finally got to watch highlights of this year’s Sanix World Rugby Youth Invitational Tournament, a tournament that has been staged every Golden Week (long holiday at the end of April~early-May, with 4 high school teams from NZ, Aus, SAf, and Korea pitted against the top 12 teams in Japan). As always, the ‘much bigger’ foreigners won the tournament but that is of little real concern. Most interesting for me was that the three southern hemisphere teams had only started this year’s season about a month or so before the tournament and had trained 2-3 times a week before coming to Japan. By contrast, the top Japanese teams (Higashi Fukuoka HS, Saga Technical HS, Joushou HS, Toin Gakuen HS, Kyoto Seisho HS, Kokugakuin Kugayama HS, etc.) basically have no off-season and have been training year-round for at least 2 hours a day (4 hours or more in some cases), yet their matches against the SAf, Aus, and NZ teams resulted (with a draw by Higashi Fukuoka being the one exception) in massive losses: scores were 12-75, 16-52, 3-41, 12-47, 5-45, 6-26. For your information, the matches were 20 minute halves in the qualifying rounds and 25 minute halves in the knock-out tournament. Despite these massive losses to teams that had been training for a month or so, there was not a single question posed in the post-match interviews about the difference in seasons or training regimes. It was a series of “gaijin (foreigners) are huge, gaijin are fast, gaijn are this, gaijin are that, gaijin are blah blah blah blah“. It was almost as if nobody wanted to know that there was a massive discrepancy between normality in other rugby countries and that in Japan and did not want anyone else to know about it. Bloody pathetic. I ask you: can a country so willfully ignorant about common practice in the big wide world really be trusted to stage a World Cup? Laddies, please do your best.