Jerry Glasier lives in New Zealand where the only religion is rugby. He is currently playing premier club rugby and has helped do scouting for the Hawkes Bay NPC team, now under ex-coach Kieran Keane. Glasier also represented Hawkes Bay at age group basketball. When wing Daisuke Ohata sprinted over the line to score his last try against Georgia in Japan's 32-7 win, he not only finished the game with a hat-trick, but he had put his name into the International Rugby record books.
When wing Daisuke Ohata sprinted over the line to score his last try against Georgia in Japan's 32-7 win, he not only finished the game with a hat-trick, but he had put his name into the International Rugby record books.
His third try took his test try tally to 65, one more than the previous record of 64 held by legendary Australian winger David Campese. However, Campese became a legend not only because he held the test try scoring record, but because he also had played 101 tests from 1982-96.
In 1991 when Australia won their first rugby world cup, Campese was also named the player of the tournament after scoring six tries in six matches.
Ohata has a lot to prove before being considered an international rugby legend, but after scoring 65 tries in 55 test matches, he's well on his way. He also has scored an amazing 21 tries in 5 "friendly" international matches, and being a winger, he also has to rely on good team play to receive the ball, let alone individual brilliance to score a try.
His three tries against Georgia showed not only his team's brilliance, but also his own because they were scored in three very different ways.
The first was scored after following up a chip ahead from Yuta Imamura in the 36th minute. The second came in the 59th minute, when he scored after joining a maul five metres from the line, before getting pushed over by his pack. The third came in the fifth minute of injury time when he used his pace to exploit a narrow gap down the blindside of the field.
His personal best of eight tries in a match is hard to beat, even if the opponent was only Chinese Taipei. Surprisingly, despite playing for rugby minnows Japan, he has scored at least a quarter of his tries against major Rugby nations. Most notable was his try against Wales at the 1999 World Cup.
Ohata, as with most world class athletes, is also very humble. Just look what he said after receiving one million yen and a gold-striped shirt as special awards to mark his record breaking occasion – "I doubt that Campese would have expected a Japanese player to break his record."
So do I. But, records are made to be broken, and with the class that Ohata is showing, the record he sets could be untouchable.