Retallick, Savea and Rennie chase Japan Rugby League One title with Kobe Steelers

Kobelco Kobe Steelers will face Kubota Spears in the Japan Rugby League One final at the National Stadium in Tokyo on Sunday, with All Blacks stalwarts Brodie Retallick and Ardie Savea and outgoing head coach Dave Rennie all chasing a club title that has proved elusive in recent years.

Kobe arrive as the competition’s dominant force this season. They finished as top seeds in the regular season, led the try-scoring charts by 19 ahead of their nearest rivals, beat Kubota within the last month, and dismantled Tokyo Sungoliath by a record 46 points in the semi-final. On paper, the Kansai club are overwhelming favourites.

Yet the men who matter most inside the Kobe camp know better than to treat any final as a formality. Rennie, who takes charge of the All Blacks after this match, has not won a club title since guiding the Chiefs to back-to-back Super Rugby crowns in 2012 and 2013. His three-year tenure with the Wallabies yielded limited success, and he has methodically rebuilt Kobe from a ninth-place finish the season before his arrival, through fifth and third, to this year’s championship decider as top seeds.

Retallick and Savea carry similarly complicated trophy cabinets for players of their stature. Both were part of the Chiefs sides that won those two Super Rugby titles, and both shared in New Zealand’s Rugby World Cup triumph in 2015. But the Lions series in 2017 ended in a draw, and New Zealand fell short at both the 2019 and 2023 World Cups. Savea’s only other major club honour came when the Hurricanes won Super Rugby in 2017; further silverware at that level has not followed for either man.

Kubota, despite being statistically outgunned across almost every metric this season, will not be written off entirely. The head-to-head record between the two clubs over their last five meetings favours the Spears four wins to one, a detail that underlines why Rennie and his squad will be preparing with the same care they would apply to any knockout fixture.

For Retallick, Savea, and Rennie, the statistics that have defined their season become irrelevant once Sunday’s kick-off arrives. The only figures that will matter are those on the scoreboard when the final whistle sounds in Tokyo.