Ben McCalman: "I’d love to be able to go back to Japan one day"

Wallabies and Western Force No.8 Ben McCalman has absolutely no regrets about spending his off-season playing in Japan. He said this week he’d have no hesitation recommending the flexible contract option to teammates contemplating doing so.

After playing with Top League champions Panasonic over the summer, McCalman is refreshed and ready to make his Super Rugby return this weekend, named on the Force’s bench to take on the Reds in Brisbane on Saturday.

The shortened Japanese season meant McCalman had only a few days at home after the Rugby World Cup before jetting off to Japan, but it’s now been four weeks since his last game.

After beating Toshiba in a thriller to decide the Top League, Panasonic then completed the double, beating Teikyo University 49-15 in the All-Japan Championship, played at the Sunwolves’ Prince Chichibu Memorial Stadium. It was the second time Panasonic had completed the double in the last three seasons.

Though he’s ready to get stuck back into Super Rugby and the rebuilding of the Western Force, it’s very clear that McCalman got everything he wanted out of his Japanese sojourn.

“Mate, I loved it,” he told me from Perth this week. “Certainly a bit of a culture shock, and the language barrier’s interesting at times, but it was a very enjoyable style of rugby the boys played. I was lucky, at Panasonic, we had a bit of success there and it was the third title we’d won in a row.”

For McCalman, the stint was a great opportunity to link up with former teammates Berrick Barnes, and former Wallabies coach Robbie Deans, and well as playing alongside Springboks outside back, JP Pietersen.

The Top League standard was strong, McCalman said, and rugby in Japan is certainly riding the rugby wave after the Brave Blossoms set the Rugby World Cup alight.

“I was probably most surprised by the amount of support we had, to be honest. Big crowds every weekend, and even lots of camera crews rocking up to even our trainings – all because we had a few guys in our side who played in [Japan’s Rugby World Cup] side (Brave Blossoms and Sunwolves skipper Shota Horie, and Highlanders scrumhalf Fumiaki Tanaka, among others).

“It’s definitely a very quick style of rugby. Their bodies are generally a bit smaller, and the contact probably isn’t as high as you’d expect in Super Rugby, but it’s still a very fast-paced game.”

And as we all saw on the weekend, that emotional support is flowing into the Sunwolves’ entry into Super Rugby. Add to that the almost rock-star fever engulfing Brisbane currently, and it seems rugby in Japan is rocketing up the popularity charts.

“Oh, it is, yeah, and I think it’s great that we are expanding the game and getting into Japanese rugby. That ground [Prince Chichibu Memorial Stadium] was where we played our last couple of games; they’ve obviously done a bit of work on it, laid a bit of new turf by the looks. It looked in pretty good shape (laughs).

“I’m excited to get back over there actually; we get a chance to play over there [Round 11, May 7]. To see my captain, Shota Horie, score their first try was great – there’s a few crowd favourites over there, and obviously Ayumu Goromaru starting for the Reds after getting some good game time on the weekend.

“I guess it’s unfortunate that a lot of their star players aren’t playing for the Sunwolves, but I think in years to come as the game grows stronger, they’ll certainly be playing for them.”

Despite the culture shock, the familiar faces within the Panasonic set-up made life easy, McCalman said.

“Yeah, it was very good, very enjoyable. We’re probably seeing, not a more relaxed but just a different side to Robbie. Because of the language barrier, you probably spend more time hanging out with anyone who can speak English, and so the coach-player relationship there certainly gets a chance to grow.

“I think also, playing with JP Pietersen, you normally play against him with the Springboks or the Sharks, and you don’t really get much of a chance to associate with, or understand where they come from. So it was good to actually play with guys you’re normally competing against. Hayden Parker from the Highlanders was over there by himself too, so we hung out a fair bit.

“It was probably easier for us than for the local boys, when Robbie’s presenting in English and then the translator’s got to do his best to understand what Robbie’s trying to talk about, and put that back into Japanese. I guess once you’re on the field… there’s always little changes during the game, and that’s probably the hardest thing to pick; whether it’s in set piece lineouts or anything like that.

“But you just get the general idea of what they’re talking about and you work out from their body language, and you just go from there.”

Away from rugby, McCalman told me he got everything out of the stint he’d hoped to. The Panasonic side is based in Ota, in the Gunma Prefecture, north-west of Tokyo, and being away from one of the busiest cities in the world definitely made life easier.

“Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I loved the culture, loved the food. The local boys got us out and around a fair bit. They took us fishing one day – I think it was -21°C! – and they dug a bit of a hole through the ice and caught a couple of… well, I’d probably call them bait fish, but they were pretty excited to catch them! It was good to get among it.

“We were nearly two hours out of Tokyo. They call it the country of Japan – two-acre rice farms everywhere – and coming from the country myself, it was pretty easy to live out there and still be able to drive around. Catching up with other guys, like Bernard Foley in Tokyo, catching trains and it was pretty hectic in there, but it was good; it was something different, and I’d love to be able to go back over there one day and play again.”

Of course, McCalman was able to go to Japan for the off-season on the back of the flexible contract deal he signed with the Australian rugby union last season. He’s aware of the inevitable perception should he pick up an early season injury, but says it’s more about being smart with preparation and recovery.

“Before I headed over, I knew I was going to a very good Panasonic side, and that was going to be a good chance for rotation. Obviously, you can only have two foreign players on the field at any one time, so you actually can’t play a lot of rugby. For me, I didn’t start a lot of games, I was more used for the last ten or twenty minutes.

“It is a different build-up [to the Super Rugby season]. After the Top League Final, we played the top University side, which was only about four weeks ago. And I played pretty much a full game, so the fitness won’t be too much of an issue.

“For me, it was more important to have those couple of weeks at home and not think about rugby at all [Force coach Michael Foley told McCalman to head back to western NSW for his first two weeks back in Australia].

“That’s probably the biggest thing as far as the flexible contract goes, that you do get time off and get away, so that when you come back, you actually want to be back and enjoy getting back into it. Some people probably would want to get straight back into the pre-season, but for me, it was more useful to get away.

“And JP Pietersen, he’s been doing this [playing back-to-back] for three years! I don’t think I’ll be doing that; I enjoy my time off. And it was just a once-off for me; it was a shortened Japanese season – seven round games, and then three finals. You didn’t even play every team. So it wasn’t a normal season, and for me, it has worked. The important thing now is to quickly get back into it here with the Force and have some results go our way.”

The enthusiasm in McCalman’s voice around the Japanese stint was clear, and he said he’d have no hesitation in telling any teammates contemplating a flexible contract stint to head over there.

“No, I wouldn’t, not at all. I just loved it. If I didn’t go, I would’ve just had the two months at home – which would’ve been nice as well – but it was actually refreshing to go into a new environment and buying into a new culture, and getting away from it all.

“If I had my time again, I’d definitely do the same thing.”

McCalman has returned to a Force side in the middle of rediscovering themselves, and while managing to mention a couple of teammates to have impressed him already, he says the new faces within have really re-energised the squad.

“Yeah, they do, but at the same time you want to try and keep the main parts of your squad together, too, so that it’s not just introducing new faces and new positions everywhere.

“I think Adam Coleman [is one to stand out]. That’s one thing I’ve noticed, he’s really running that lineout well. And we have only played one game, but he’s been driving the standards really well.

“And I think Jono [Lance], also. I haven’t played with him yet, but I’m really looking forward to playing with him, and all the new guys. Just hope we can get a few early wins on the board.”

And that all starts with the Queensland Reds on Saturday night in Brisbane, a fixture in which the Force have matched up well in recently, losing only two of the last seven games between the sides. But McCalman says nothing will come easy in Brisbane on the backend of summer.

“In previous year, they’ve always been a team we’ve enjoyed playing against. Playing at Suncorp as well, it’s a great place to play. And just like last weekend, the ball will certainly be slippery.

“They’re a really strong set piece side. ‘Stilesy’ there (Reds forwards coach, Nick Stiles) does a good job there, and works them hard. It’s certainly a big challenge for us.

“Neither side will want to walk off the field at the end regretting, ‘oh, we didn’t play enough’ or ‘we didn’t play the way we said we were going to play’, so that’s been a big focus for us. We’ve been training all week to a certain style we want to play, so it’ll be disappointing if we don’t go out there this weekend and do that.”