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The story
For the first time, Fukui Prefecture will send its representative to the 106th National High School Rugby Tournament (kicking off December 27 at Hanazono) without holding any qualifying matches. Fukui has only three schools with rugby clubs — Wakasa Higashi (25 players), Wakasa (8 players), and Tsuruga Technical (4 players) — and even combining them into a joint team couldn’t produce enough players to field a proper match, so the Wakasa Higashi/Wakasa joint team will go straight to the national tournament. This follows Shimane, which skipped its qualifier in the previous tournament. On 5channel, opinions clashed sharply between those blaming the declining birthrate and those arguing rugby itself is simply unpopular, with some calling for a regional-block representative system like the one used in the spring national high school baseball invitational.
Nikkan Sports [October 8, 2026, 18:42]
It was learned on the 8th through interviews with those involved that Fukui will, for the first time, hold no qualifying tournament due to a shortage of club members — following Shimane, which had no qualifier to decide its entrant in the previous tournament — for the 106th National High School Rugby Tournament (kicking off December 27 at Hanazono).
In Fukui, Wakasa Higashi has 25 players, but the only other schools with rugby clubs, Wakasa and Tsuruga Technical, have just 8 and 4 players respectively — even combined, that’s fewer than 15, not enough to field a match. For this tournament, Wakasa Higashi and Wakasa will enter the national tournament as a joint team.
Source: nikkansports.com / Original article here
What people said
They probably just withdrew, honestly
No other sport works like this
Only 4 of those are joint teams
Meaning 31 schools can field a rugby team solo
Even powerhouse Higashi-Fukuoka has to win 3 rounds just to make it to nationals
Why has Fukuoka always been such a rugby stronghold?
was a thrown-together team that borrowed about 10 guys from the soccer club, but we still made it to the prefectural final lol
The club's gone now, no more rugby team
If that was Osaka, that'd be impressive
Soccer club's the real MVP here lol
Baseball and soccer are probably next to lose their qualifiers too
Basketball and volleyball still run proper qualifiers
Rugby's just that unpopular
Soccer even has super seeds (bye rounds for top-ranked teams)
If there's no qualifier at all, there's no 'wear and tear' to speak of
Which sport's next to go this way?
I've got a guess~ lol
1 team
Shimane, Fukui
2 teams
Yamagata
3 teams
Tottori, Kagawa, Kochi, Saga
4 teams
Toyama, Ishikawa
Yamagata's probably next
Half will be gone in 3 years, all of them in 5 — there's nothing you can do about a team sport you can't even scrape together enough players to practice
Re: #53
Judo and kendo are basically individual sports so they're fine, you can just train at a local dojo
The real problem is baseball, whose participation numbers are dropping just as fast as rugby's. Baseball can't make the jump to outside-school clubs, so eventually only private schools in big cities will have teams left
Fukui, Kagawa, Ishikawa, Toyama — those are all handball strongholds, interestingly
That's not nerves, that's genuine fear
Sports are fun because you play teams of similar skill level, but these kids don't even get that chance
Better to have like one school represent all of Shikoku, one for all of Chugoku
Feel bad for kids who get slaughtered at nationals otherwise
Judo and rugby do seem like the sports with the most injuries though
Shimane and Tottori can share one combined representative
In exchange, add a slot somewhere like Kanagawa or Saitama
But in 15 years that'll fall below 700,000 — that's the reality
The one-rep-per-prefecture model is probably going to fade out across sports, not just rugby
There's also baseball, a sport where participation has halved even with all the money behind it
Rugby even had its moment when the national team was all the hype, but dropping off this much means it's just fundamentally not a sport that fits modern Japanese kids anymore
The rugby federation really needs to fix this feeder pipeline first, but they're broke and the board's full of incompetents, so nothing's going to change
Kiyo◯: 'The World Cup legacy, dammit!'
◯miya: 'Go pro, rake in rich customers, cha-ching!'
…And the customers never showed up
Background and key points of this debate
The core of the story is that Fukui has never before gone without a qualifying tournament — this is the first time. Until now, Shimane in the previous tournament was the only prefecture exempted from qualifiers, so the fact that another prefecture now joins that list shows the shortage of club members spreading through regional sports. The thread split over how to interpret the cause: one camp argued it’s simply a product of the declining birthrate, while another insisted rugby itself is unusually unpopular compared to other sports. Several commenters called for adopting a regional-block representative system like the one used in the spring national high school baseball invitational, though it’s easy to overlook that the current National High School Rugby Tournament still runs on a one-representative-per-prefecture system, and that tournament structures differ from sport to sport. It also helps to keep in mind, as background for the debate, the swing between rugby’s surge in popularity after the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan and the subsequent decline in the number of people playing the sport.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5channel (Entertainment/Sports News+) thread “[Regional High School Rugby] Fukui, Shimane Hold No Qualifiers — Due to Player Shortage, a First for Fukui — Joint Teams Head to Nationals.”
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