England Run In 13 Tries Against Japan at Twickenham
England scored 13 tries against Japan at Twickenham, after a Japan player had been sent off before the ball was even touched. A sending off means a player is shown a red card and ordered off the pitch, so Japan were on the back foot from the first whistle. The Guardian reported the margin and the dismissal in its match coverage.
England's head coach Steve Borthwick picked a side that gave several players a chance to stake a claim. Max Ojomoh, Will Joseph, Henry Pollock and Maro Itoje all featured. Former England head coach Eddie Jones watched from the coaches' box, a reminder of how closely the two sides' histories are tied together.
A try is worth five points and is scored when an attacker grounds the ball over the opposition's try line. Thirteen of them in one match is a heavy scoreline by any measure, and England did it by keeping the ball moving and piling pressure on Japan's defence. The result follows a run of England form: they beat Australia the week before, and earlier in the summer they had dispatched Fiji.
Japan are no strangers to upsets. They beat South Africa at the 2015 Rugby World Cup and reached the quarter-finals at the 2019 tournament, on home soil in Japan. Those memories make the scale of this defeat harder to shrug off for their supporters.
The crowd was a big part of the day. England and Japan drew a near sell-out at Twickenham, and 9,864 of the tickets were sold to under-16s. That is thought to be a record for juniors at a men's Test at the stadium, which is a good sign for the next generation of players in the stands.
Japan and Fiji are invited guests in the Nations Championship, the international competition in which the other 10 competing nations, drawn from the Six Nations and the Southern Hemisphere's SANZAAR unions, pool their commercial rights. For Japan, matches like this one are a chance to test themselves against the strongest sides in the world. For England, the question is how they handle the step up in opponents as the season moves on.
