Japan's rugby team bank on business of winning

Commercially the game needs to do better in order for Japan to continue to improve. Let's hope it does. The JRFU though is poorly run and I don't think they have the right people in there to capitalise on the RWC success.

A fully professional league would help. If they can pull 17,000 fans to university games, they should be able to get more for a pro league, and that suggests it would be viable

Unfortunately rugby still has a long way to go in Japan. Case in point - a Japanese side is playing in the super 15 competition that kicks off end of February against teams from Australia, New Zealand South Africa and Argentina however there is no mention in the above article. The Sunwolves need to be promoted!!!!

Not very auspicious that the the IRB dropped Tokyo from the Sevens World Series this year in favour of Singapore. Last year the crowd & atmosphere was finally getting better although still a long way from the brilliant Hong Kong 7's.

Right on saitamasimon,

Bring on the sun wolves and promote them. ! Ikimasho asobimasho masho masho

The problem is keeping the momentum going. In the long term, it means getting more gaijins to naturalize.

In the long term, it means getting more gaijins to naturalize

Not sure about that - I would say that in the long term it means developing Japan's rugby culture to the point that there is a large enough talent pool that no-one talks about 'getting more gaijins'!

Japan is a great country to watch rugby, tickets in the Top League are cheap (around jpy 1.600) and you can pretty much seat wherever you want. Unfortunately I think the Sunwolves are asking much more to attend the incoming SR games ( jpy 3000 behind the posts, much more elsewhere) and am not sure the small but passionate Japanese rugby community will cough up the extra money to watch teams they don't know much about.