Despite the presence of the world champions in Tokyo and the fact that the national team has headed off to Europe for a 3 week tour it was business as usual for 12 of the 24 A league national teams.

With the Kansai league teams and top Kanto league teams producing most of the players on national and representative duty it was left to the teams in Kyushu to provide the bulk of the local rugby action.

Sanix remained on top of the league after their 45-30 win over Chugoku Denryoku while the other electric power company, Kyushu Denryoku, fought out a hard won 29-24 victory over Matsuda to also remain unbeaten. It would seem the Kyushu Rugby Union have taken a leaf out of the Sumo textbook in arranging the games for the top teams to appear at the end of the season. Having notched up 433 points in their first 5 games Sanis will probably find their last two games a great deal tougher and their game against Kyushu Denryoku will decide who wins the regional stage of the championship.

In the other games Coca Cola West Japan beat Mitsubishi Jidosha 69-6 and NTT West Japan who beat Mitsubishi Juko 50-0. Those results mean that there are now 4 teams all in with a chance to qualify as the third place team and therby go onto the national stages of the competition.

There were also two games played at the weekend in the Kanto league. Sanyo defeated Secom 31-26 while Kubota defeated Shinnitetsu 61-21. Kubota, despite having two players in the national squad in Takashi Akatsuka and Hideyuki Yoshida, will be one of only two teams in action next week when they take on Secom.
However for the rest of the country the only game that matters is on Friday when the All Blacks take on the Pacific Barbarians. With so much pride at stake for players on both sides it should be a far more enthralling game than the one on Saturday that saw the Wallabies beat a Japan President's XV despite a heroic first 60 minutes from the hosts.