Well the Scots know that they need to be just that little more cautious about their opener in the tournament. They, along with the rest of the world, will have seen Japan pull off the biggest shock in world rugby as they took down South Africa in their Pool B victory over South Africa. It was a pacy, spirited performance from the Japanese as they scored an 84th minute winning touchdown to pull off the 32-34 victory.
It was a result which really set the tournament alight and now Scotland are next in the firing line for Japan at Kingsholm, Gloucester. The Scots do get Stuart Hogg into the starting lineup and while they will go into the match as strong 1/8 favourites at online betting site Stan James they will have to tread carefully against the Japanese who like to play a very high-tempo game that the Scots will need to take the sting out of. The Asian nation will also be running high on confidence after claiming a big scalp.
From their four previous matches against Japan, Scotland have triumphed in all of them, two of them coming in previous World Cup Pool groups. The most recent clash came at Murrayfield in November 2013 with the Scots running out big 42-17 winners. Scotland are one place behind Japan in the official world rankings at the moment and they have won just two of their last nine international matches played.
Japan, who are trading as 33/1 shots to beat the Scots have won nine of their last ten games, including victories over South Africa, Italy and Samoa in that sequence. So definitely a side on the rise but they have averaged just 11 points per game from their previous meetings with Scotland while the Scottish have returned an average of 55 points per game against the Japanese.
While the Japanese are likely to have their tails up and continue to put in a lot of enthusiasm, hard work and run the game at speed, Scotland will at least have had the advantage of seeing what they did against South Africa and try to negate it. Online betting site Stan James have a Scotland -16 handicap up at a price of 10/11 for the match and the bookmaker also offer money back as a free bet if your first try scorer in the match doesn’t open the scoring but does net the second of the game.
