Japan Rugby Top League’s Panasonic WildKnights and Saitama Rugby Football Union (SRFU) have revealed plans to build a new training complex for the club within the Saitama Municipal Sports and Culture Park. Read more
The Rugby World Cup kicks off in Japan today when the host nation take on Russia, with six weeks of stunning action ahead of us. Read more
The newly-built Rugby World Cup 2019 venue Kamaishi Recovery Memorial Stadium in Iwate Prefecture, Japan, has opened. Read more
Three Japanese major event organising committees are to join forces to share knowledge and expertise in support of their respective events.
World Rugby and the Japan Rugby 2019 organising committee have been looking ahead to an important year of preparation after Rugby World Cup 2019 marked 1,000 days to go. Read more
World Rugby has concluded its latest Rugby World Cup 2019 tournament review meetings in Tokyo and says it is satisfied with the organising committee’s hosting preparations. Read more
Japan’s top sports officials kicked off proceedings at the eagerly awaited Stadia & Arena Asia Pacific 2016 conference and exhibition which opened today in Yokohama. Read more
Zaha Hadid called it ‘a scandal’ and the Japanese Sports Minister Hakubun Shimomura tendered his resignation when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe requested the New National Stadium project go back to the drawing board. Hadid’s design, which won the international architecture competition, and the sports minister, both became victims of what an investigative panel has found to be ‘an incompetent organisational structure’.
Yomiuri Shimbun reported:
The results of interviews conducted by a third-party panel probing the failure of the initial plan for the new National Stadium suggest a lack of risk awareness and a disdainful attitude toward information disclosure among leaders of the Japan Sport Council (JSC) and the sports ministry.
The panel, which was commissioned by the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry, compiled a report that concluded the reason for the failure of the project lies with an incompetent organisational structure that is incapable of handling a project of this scale.
A main problem has been the JSC’s inability to pin down costs. General contractors reported the total construction cost estimate to be ¥308.8 billion, the joint ventures in charge of design put their estimate at ¥211.2 billion, against an initially estimated cost of ¥162.5 billion.
The new stadium was due to host the Rugby World Cup Final in 2019 but World Rugby provided the JSC with some extra breathing space to get back on track when last week it accepted an offer that Yokohama Stadium (pictured in Tokyo Stadium 2020 mode) will replace the new National Stadium among the 12 venues and will host both the opening ceremony and opening match of the 2019 Rugby World Cup.
World Rugby President, Bernard Lapasset, said:
These are exciting, unprecedented times for Japan Rugby and this revised roadmap reinforces and reflects the shared vision and mission to deliver a Rugby World Cup that will be great for Japan, great for Asia and great for Rugby.
2019 Rugby World Cup organisation’s Chief Executive, Akira Shimazu, said:
This revised plan is an exciting blueprint for success and we are confident that Rugby World Cup 2019 will be very special tournament for Japan and global rugby.
