Composure Under Pressure: How Japan Silenced Italy to Open the Nations Championship
Japan beat Italy 27–10 at Chichibunomiya Rugby Stadium on 4 July 2026, and the scoreline undersells how comfortably the second half unfolded. Italy scored inside the opening exchanges, kept the contest at 17–10 by half-time, and then managed nothing at all for the remaining forty minutes. That shutout, more than any single try, is the story of this match. A Japan side missing its head coach on match day found a way to close a Test match against a Tier One nation without conceding an inch once the interval arrived.
It was only the third time in history Japan have beaten Italy, and their first success against them since 2018. Italy has held the upper hand across the bulk of the fixture’s history. That the win came in the opening round of the newly launched Nations Championship, in front of a certified crowd of 21,329, gives it weight beyond the immediate result — it is the kind of result a young competition remembers.
Answering the Early Blow
Italy could hardly have asked for a better start. Juan Ignacio Brex crossed inside the opening minutes, part of an early attacking sequence that also involved Tommaso Menoncello and Paolo Garbisi, and for a few minutes it looked like the visitors might dictate terms in Tokyo. Japan had already probed through Kazuma Ueda off an attacking kick without reward, so the setback carried a sting.
What followed said more about Japan than the opening try did about Italy. Warner Dearns barrelled over to level the response, and Takuro Matsunaga added a try of his own along with the boot. By the time Garbisi kicked a penalty to bring Italy back within touching distance, Japan had already re-established a 17–10 lead at the break. Japan finished the match with 51% possession and 52% territory, a share that crept toward 60% of the ball in the second half alone. This was a gradual squeeze, not any single moment, that showed how they wrestled control away from Italy after the early setback.
A Second Half Italy Couldn’t Solve
If the first half was about response, the second was about control. Ben Gunter’s try shortly after the restart pushed the lead out to 24–10, and from there Italy simply stopped scoring. Matsunaga’s kicking added the gap that closed the game out at 27–10, but the more telling number is the zero next to Italy’s name for the final forty minutes.
The control shows up in the numbers: 54% territory and 35 kicks for 984 metres, nearly 300 more than Italy managed from hand — a territorial squeeze aimed at pinning Italy’s back three deep in their own 22 and forcing exits under pressure rather than letting them play with ball in hand. That pressure forced errors as much as it forced retreats. Italy’s repeated unforced errors as they tried to play their way out from under it, resulted in possessions produced but without a scoring chance. A team that had opened the scoring with real intent finished the match unable to build anything of substance against a Japan defence that, by half-time, already knew it was ahead.
Leadership Without the Head Coach
All of this happened with Eddie Jones absent from the touchline, serving the final match of a four-game suspension. Forwards coach Neal Hatley ran the side on match day, and Michael Leitch (restored to the captaincy) led the players through it. It is an unusual way to open a tournament, and Japan’s response to it was to win anyway, and win the kind of controlled, low-event contest that suggests structure rather than improvisation.
The evidence supports the coaching arrangement and the result, but it does not establish a causal link between the two. What it does show is that Japan’s game plan held up without its usual voice delivering it in person. Leitch, afterwards, credited a settled response to going behind early: “We talked all week about starting this competition the right way. The players stayed composed after Italy scored first and trusted the plan.”
Hatley, for his part, pointed to the composure of the group after Italy’s early score and praised both the preparation during the week and the contribution of the starting side and finishers. He also highlighted Shuhei Ito’s individual performance. That composure Leitch and Hatley both spoke of was most visible up front, in the pack, Leitch himself led from the second row.
The Pack Did the Heavy Lifting
Two of Japan’s three tries came from forwards. Dearns’ opener and Gunter’s second-half score bookended the contest. Gunter’s follow-up performance, recognised with the Player of the Match award, underlined how much Japan’s pack contributed beyond simply holding its own. The scrum numbers backed that up. Japan won all four of their own put-ins, while Italy managed eight from eleven. That reliable platform allowed Japan’s forwards to dictate terms rather than simply survive them. Gunter himself (speaking after being named Player of the Match), pointed away from individual output and toward the collective defensive effort and preparation — consistent with a performance built on a unit holding its shape rather than any one moment of brilliance.
Own the Breakdown
None of this required Japan to be spectacular. It required them to answer an early try, take a lead into the break, and then defend it without concession for forty minutes. Italy had come into the match with genuine Six Nations momentum and a settled backline built around Brex, Menoncello and Garbisi. They did all three, and they did it under a coaching structure nobody would have chosen by design. For a tournament in its first round, that is a considerable marker to set. Japan’s win over Italy ranks among their most notable results against Tier One opposition in recent years, and it sends an early signal that they intend to be taken seriously in the new competition. Italy scored once, Japan shut the door, and a new competition has its first genuine statement result.
Japan
Starting: 1 Takato Okabe, 2 Mamoru Harada, 3 Shuhei Takeuchi, 4 Harry Hockings, 5 Warner Dearns (c), 6 Ben Gunter, 7 Kanji Shimokawa, 8 Jack Cornelsen, 9 Naoto Saitō, 10 Ryunosuke Ito, 11 Kippei Ishida, 12 Yuya Hirose, 13 Dylan Riley, 14 Kazuma Ueda, 15 Takuro Matsunaga
Impact: 16 Hayate Era, 17 Sojiro Otsuka, 18 Keijiro Tamefusa, 19 Michael Stolberg, 20 Michael Leitch, 21 Tiennan Costley, 22 Itsuki Kamimura, 23 Sam Greene
Italy
Starting: 1 Danilo Fischetti, 2 Tommaso Di Bartolomeo, 3 Marco Riccioni, 4 Niccolò Cannone, 5 Andrea Zambonin, 6 Alessandro Ortombina, 7 Michele Lamaro (c), 8 Lorenzo Cannone, 9 Stephen Varney, 10 Paolo Garbisi, 11 Monty Ioane, 12 Tommaso Menoncello, 13 Juan Ignacio Brex, 14 Malik Faissal, 15 Lorenzo Pani
Impact: 16 Gianmarco Lucchesi, 17 Mirco Spagnolo, 18 Muhamed Hasa, 19 Riccardo Favretto, 20 Ross Vintcent, 21 Alessandro Fusco, 22 Leonardo Marin, 23 Tommaso Allan
Venue: Prince Chichibu Memorial Stadium, Tokyo
Kick‑off: 17:40 JST
Attendance: ~27,000 (sell‑out)
Match Officials
Referee: Nic Berry (RA)
Assistant Referees: Luc Ramos (FFR), Sam Grove‑White (SRU)
TMO: Ian Tempest (RFU)
FPRO: Andrew Jackson (RFU)
