• Coach says
South Africa have erased memory of Brighton 2015• ‘The way the Japanese people have adopted teams is special’
Japan is waltzing at an oval ball. South Africa spent the first week of the tournament here preparing for their opening match against
New Zealand, enjoying relative anonymity, but when they arrived at their Shinjuku hotel on Monday evening they realised as soon as they stepped off their coach that they were in a different World Cup.
Such was the clamour for their opening media conference in the lead‑up to the quarter-final against
Japan at Tokyo Stadium on Sunday that a new, larger room on their hotel’s banqueting floor had to be hastily furnished, all rather different to when they were based in the city’s
Disney resort and two dozen chairs were more than was needed.