TOKYO – Springboks star Cheslin Kolbe ran in one of Tokyo Sungoliath’s four second-half tries as they kicked off their Japan Rugby League One campaign with a 29-15 comeback win over Black Rams Tokyo on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The season-opening clash at Tokyo’s Prince Chichibu Memorial Rugby Ground featured two sides captained by former All Blacks teammates, with flanker Sam Cane leading Sungoliath and No. 9 TJ Perenara skippering the Black Rams.<\/p>\n
Sungoliath trailed 8-7 at the break and did not take the lead until former Wallaby Sean McMahon went over in the 63rd minute, with Mikiya Takamoto adding the extras for a 19-15 margin.<\/p>\n
Player of the match Kolbe made it 24-15 with his try in the 69th minute, with replacement hooker Tatsuya Miyazaki throwing a long cutout pass to set up the South African flyer after Sungoliath forced a turnover in attacking territory.<\/p>\n
The Black Rams’ hopes of regaining the lead evaporated when hooker Masashi Onishi and Perenara were yellow-carded in quick succession, leaving head coach Tabai Matson’s team to finish the game with 13 men.<\/p>\n
In other action from the opening day of the season, 2024-25 runners-up Spears Tokyo Bay came back to beat the Kobe Steelers 33-28 despite playing with 14 men following Akira Ieremia’s red card in the 51st minute at Noevir Stadium.<\/p>\n
Toyota Verblitz overcame the Mie Heat 44-33, while the Urayasu D-Rocks held off the Sagamihara Dynaboars 27-24.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TOKYO – Springboks star Cheslin Kolbe ran in one of Tokyo Sungoliath’s four second-half tries as they kicked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-345389","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}