What a match! Wish I was there to watch this live. I cannot believe Japan managed to upset Ireland who looked so strong against Scotland. The fans in Japan must be going crazy! Certainly the stadium was! Scotland looked so flat to me - a complete contrast to their first game. Maybe they underestimated Japan?

I watch every match live on ITV1 even at work via UPC app on my iPhone

It was brilliant game against Ireland and Japan deserved to win it big time. Equally entertaining was South Africa beating Namibia 57:3. I hope they will crush Italy next week.

My husband played rugby in high school in the US as they had a South African teacher who pulled a few of the "athletes" aside and said, "Have I got a game for you!"

And his obsession with rugby started then... I really enjoy watching the games: so much decision making, teamwork, athleticism - in short, a great sport! I understand it much better now than I did when my husband played as watching laterally, I could not see the ball movement and had ZERO clue! But watching it on TV helped me understand the game much more.

Should be interesting to see what develops with Ireland, England, South Africa, Australia, Whales and New Zealand. My husband doesn't think any team is really "on form" or dominant at present, so the rest of the matches should prove interesting!

As an Irish fan I was gutted after the Japan defeat. Japan played great and deserved to win.
From an Irish perspective, I think we could have been considered dark horses for the tournament before and directly after the Scotland game, but I don't think the current English, Wales, SA or NZ teams would lose to Japan in this WC, hence this result is a disappointing reality check.
Of course I'd love to be proved wrong.

Dark horses can't be quite right when we were going in ranked in the top band at 4th in the world for the draws. Before the pool stage started Ireland was top of the world rankings. So Japans win was a right stomach sinking moment.

My biggest fear is that it could mean facing the All Blacks in the knockout stage. Or facing nobody at all...

Don’t forget that Japanese rugby team is not just a wild card team who has only started playing rugby yesterday. They are hard working, capable and obedient lot that follows instructions and can come up with good game tactics and strategies. They have top coaches. Also element of taking pride as a host of the RWC2019 and support are important elements that will make them fight other teams till the end. Remember that they have already won once against South Africa in the last RWC2015. Don’t underestimate any opponent as every game is different and million things can go wrong.

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Ireland's ranking was deservedly high on the back of good results for a long time. However England & SA look really strong at the moment and I don't think Ireland will beat NZ if we meet them, whilst it could go either way against Wales, hence the dark horses label.
You mentioned the top band for the world cup draws, unless you're NZ a lot can change between when the draw is made and when the event takes place. Two years ago SA were rubbish. We beat them 38-3 in Dublin. If we play them in the QF and if (A big if at the moment) we win, it will be a one score game.

It can only happen in the Northern Hemisphere when you play home, otherwise it will be very difficult to beat SA in RWC.

Ireland beat SA in Cape town in 2016.

Ireland should have won that 2016 test series in my opinion.

However SA are a different animal at the moment. I think a QF between the two countries would be close. I'd have SA as favorites in that one.

Only happened once mate and hopefully never again

But I pretty much understand your fears, and righty so ...

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/rug...rica-1.4026683

OH Canada

A rugby powerhouse. 😢

The Canada NZ game does nothing for Rugby. It doesn't interest Kiwis as they expect to win and no-one in Canada will enjoy watching their team lose 63-0.
Maybe if the first half was rugby and the second half was ice hockey, then it would be a much more of a contest.

I don't know why they underestimated Japan, because according to the WRR they occupy a very honourable place 8th.
My country for instance is way behind and we used to be quite good at rugby.
Everything can be achieved through hard work, outstanding coaching and good investments in the field.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Rugby_Rankings

I think the Irish public underestimated Japan but the coach has been going on about how dangerous they are for 4 years. Ireland even toured in Japan 2 years ago.
World Rugby admitted that 3 of the 4 times that Ireland were penalised for being off-side were incorrect decisions and also admitted that Japan "came in from the side" at ruck time. These off-side decisions meant that the irish defenders stood further back to avoid being further penalised thereby providing more time and space to Japan. If you factor a few other decisions like Carty being tackled while in the air and giving a knock-on for Japan, i.e. should have been a penalty for ireland, one could argue its a 9-18 point swing. I also don't recall Japan being penalised for being offside or holding irish players into the ruck but both were happening.
Japan played the game and the referee better than Ireland, which is what you have to do.
As an Irish fan I was disappointed that the Irish on field leaders weren't able to rectify the situation by either constantly telling the ref what was going on or slowing the Japs down by pulling them into rucks etc....

Lol! It’s such a team in the group B that will help us to score another 50-100 points extra, alongside Namibia and Italy. The South Africa will gladly play Canada on the 8th of October.

Well this is getting strange, typhoons are cancelling matches and causing draws. It means Ireland is very likely to stay in second place if Somoa doesn't cause problems. But I was really looking forward to Scotland vs Japan, not cancelled yet but there's warnings about. It's not the way you'd like to go, especially seeing as Scotland has an outside chance of going through if they beat Japan.

They've cancelled the England vs France game as well, I was planning on having a pint and shouting for the french for an hour or so. Ah well.

I think its outrageous that games are cancelled.
The risk of typhoons was always there so they should have had back up venues, without spectators if necessary, for all games.
As it stands, England, France and NZ all get an extra rest before the QFs which is significant in Rugby.
If the Scottish game is to be cancelled, the Irish game should also be cancelled. At least then we also get a rest and avoid some definite injuries which would be picked up against Samoa.

If Japan is cancelled they'll be going in as near to fully rested as is possible. Their last game was a bye, so they'll have nearly 2 and a half weeks complete rest, same as New Zealand.
For the replacement venues we were discussing this in work actually, surely they could move the games to be played elsewhere, even if a day or two late. I mean the spectators would be out of pocket but at least there would be actual results.

It is in the rules (see section 3) and they looked at backup venues but the nearest for the E v F game was 500 miles away but it was not feasible given the timings and logistics involved.