TOKYO – Kobe Steelers clinched the Japan Rugby League One championship with a 22-13 win against Spears Tokyo Bay on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The closely fought battle provided plenty of action but only one try apiece in front of 50,451 at Tokyo’s MUFG Stadium, where Frans Ludeke’s Spears finished runners-up for the second year in a row.<\/p>\n
The match was Kobe head coach Dave Rennie’s last before departing to take over the All Blacks with less than a year and a half until the 2027 Rugby World Cup kicks off.<\/p>\n
The Spears were missing star Springbok hooker Malcolm Marx due to a bicep injury and South African-born Brave Blossoms forward Tyler Paul with a foot issue, both sustained in last week’s semifinal win against Saitama Wild Knights.<\/p>\n
The two teams went into the break deadlocked 13-13, with prop Keijiro Tamefusa dotting down in the first half for the Spears and winger Inoke Burua answering for Kobe.<\/p>\n
Making his last appearance for the Spears, former Wallabies flyhalf Bernard Foley slotted a pair of penalties either side of Kobe No. 10 Lee Seung Sin’s successful shot for a 6-3 lead before Spears winger Koga Nezuka’s chip and chase set the stage for Tamefusa to dive over in the 25th minute.<\/p>\n
Kobe hit back just four minutes later through Fijian-born flyer Burua, whose try in the corner was confirmed by the television match official.<\/p>\n
Another Lee penalty saw the teams head to the dressing room neck and neck at halftime. The Brave Blossoms playmaker hit three more penalties after the break to go a perfect six-from-six from the kicking tee.<\/p>\n
The Wild Knights came back to beat Tokyo Sungoliath 26-19 in Saturday’s third-place playoff at Prince Chichibu Memorial Rugby Ground.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TOKYO – Kobe Steelers clinched the Japan Rugby League One championship with a 22-13 win against Spears Tokyo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":720890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-720889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720889","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=720889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/720890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}