The major All Blacks subplot as Japan Rugby League One final played out

It might have been the Japan Rugby League final, but it was a day for the All Blacks after Kobelco Kobe Steelers beat Kubota Spears 22-13 on a damp afternoon in Tokyo.

In front of a crowd of 50,451 – the third year in a row where the competition finale has topped 50,000 – the New Zealand quartet of incoming coach Dave Rennie, All Black captaincy favourite Ardia Savea, man-of-the-match Brodie Retallick and centre Anton Lienert Brown, delivered for the Kansai-based outfit.

While supported by an energetic cast of locals, Retallick and Savea in particular were enormous, with their explosions of emotion at full-time graphically illustrating just how much the title meant to them personally.

Defeated in back-to-back finals, the Spears fought hard but badly missed their injured Springbok talisman Malcolm Marx, at the lineout, but even more notably at the breakdown where Savea put major pressure on, both with turnovers and by slowing down the ball delivery for the Kubota backs.

Today’s win was a memorable way for Rennie to sign off after three years at the club, returning Kobe to the title dais for the first time since his former assistant in Super Rugby, Wayne Smith, won the old Top League as the club’s Director of Rugby in 2018.

Retallick and Rennie last won at club level with the second of their Super Rugby titles at the Chiefs in 2013, while Savea’s only previous club success was as a Hurricane in 2016.

Retallick’s 17 tries for the season were the most by any player in Division One.

While in the balance until Seungsin Lee’s 79th-minute penalty goal, with each side having scored only one try, the nine-point gap represented the biggest in League One’s five championship games, eclipsing the six-point margin from the competition’s inaugural decider.

Kobe also completed back-to-back wins over the Spears for the first time in 18 years.

Although Rennie’s men were the tournament’s top tryscorers (124 tries in 20 games), their performance at the National Stadium gave further weight to the often-quoted adage that ‘tries win matches, but defence wins titles’.

As it had been throughout the year, effort without the ball played a significant part in their success, especially in the first half when the Spears enjoyed 60 per cent of possession but were held to 13-13 at the break.

Kobe’s performance on the defensive front offered a glimpse of what All Black fans can expect from the new boss, with his well-organised barricades seeing his men concede just 67 tries in 20 matches, at an average of 3.5 per outing.

The ratio has steadily improved under his charge, with Kobe having conceded at an average of 4.7 tries per game through the first two seasons of League One.

Springbok second rower Lood de Jager came through his return unscathed yesterday, throwing himself around for 57 minutes of the Wild Knights’ 26-19 win over Sungoliath in the playoff for third and fourth.