Japan captain Dearns warns set-piece battle will define clash with England

Warner Dearns has identified England’s set-piece dominance as the defining challenge for Japan ahead of their meeting at Allianz Stadium on Saturday, cautioning that no amount of tactical ingenuity will matter if the Brave Blossoms are bullied upfront.

The Japan captain pointed to a 2022 encounter — when Eddie Jones was still in charge of England — as a cautionary tale. “They brought line speed on our forwards and we didn’t have anywhere to go but backwards,” Dearns recalled. “I assume they’ll have similar tactics and bring the physicality again this time.”

Dearns was direct in his assessment of where the match will be won or lost. “It’s always a set-piece battle against England,” he said. “They do a very good job at the scrum and line-out and in the past we’ve ended up on the back foot a bit.”

The warning carries particular weight given that head coach Jones has publicly emphasised left-field tactics as Japan’s route to disrupting the overwhelming favourites. Dearns’s message is that those plans need a platform — and that platform must be earned in the trenches.

England, under Steve Borthwick, have built their identity around exactly the kind of forward dominance Dearns is bracing for: a powerful scrum, a reliable line-out, and aggressive defensive line speed designed to compress space for opposing ball-carriers. Japan, who have long relied on tempo and width to offset physical mismatches against tier-one nations, will need to absorb that pressure before their more expansive game can function.

Dearns’s candour reflects a pragmatic read of the contest. Japan are not expected to match England man-for-man across the front five, but the captain’s point is that they must be competitive enough to give their backs room to operate. If the set-piece collapses, the rest of the game plan becomes irrelevant.