Rugby in Japan can be traced back to the middle of the 19th century and a particularly gruesome murder, known as the Namamugi Incident of 1862. Charles Lennox Richardson, an English merchant en route to the Kawasaki Daishi temple, was slashed to death by samurai for disrespecting the feudal lord of the Satsuma Domain. The resulting panic from expats led to the deployment of English garrisons in Yokohama over the next decade, which, it’s said, correlated with a surge in sporting activity in the city. Four years later Yokohama Football Club was established, making it the oldest rugby club in Asia, and among the oldest in the world.

A century later, rugby clubs had become embedded across the land. In 1960, the Wild Knights were formed by the alumni of the Kumagai Industrial School and workers of the Toshiba corporation. One of the country’s top sides, they’ve won the Top League six times, and been crowned All-Japan Champions twice, 2008 and 2011.

Like the Yokohama side of 160 years ago, they’re also benefitting from an English influence, as they sit top of their conference once again, in the newly rebranded Japan Rugby League One. “The cherry blossoms are out right now so it is beautiful,” says George Kruis, a title winner four times with Saracens, and now with a Top League title to his name from his successful maiden campaign last year.

We meet the 45-cap England lock in Tokyo, high up in the Keio Plaza Hotel in bustling Shinjuku. For all the attention he may have got from winning three Six Nations and a Grand Slam with England, a Test cap against New Zealand for the British & Irish Lions and three European Champions Cups for Saracens, his rugby prowess is not what gets the attention in Japan. “I do stand out,” he says. “I’m 6’6, blond, blue-eyed. I have a beard. There’s a lot of ‘ooohhhh’, which is quite funny.”

The 32-year-old lives forty miles northwest of Tokyo in Saitama, where the Wild Knights relocated for the start of the 2022 season. After a narrow 25-26 victory over Shizuoka Blue Revs, he’s been enjoying a well-earned week off, with his side on course for a second domestic championship since his arrival.

It’s a world away from the home comforts of north London – and before that Dorking where he grew up – but George has quickly become a connoisseur of Japanese cuisine. “Each prefecture is known for different specialties,” he explains. “If you go to Miyazaki, it’s deep-fried nanban chicken. If you go to Hokkaido, it’s crab, scallops and Sapporo Classics. In Osaka, it’s the savoury pancake okonomiyaki,” he says, warming to a topic clearly close to his heart – and stomach.

“Of all the places I’ve travelled to and played in, it is so foreign,” he admits. “Japan is like a different world, rather than a different country.”

It was a culture shock from day one. “We went straight into quarantine in our house and had food delivered by the club,” he recalls. “There were bits in there that I had no idea what I was eating. It could have been horse sashimi.

“But it’s lovely because I’m food obsessed. I’ve loved to pair food with travelling. Tokyo is mind-blowing. There are stacks and stacks of restaurants in every building, from the ground floor to the top floor. If you’re big into exploring food, like I am, there’s no better place.”

That desire to explore new lands and chase new experiences rather than more medals is something George credits to his former club. “Saracens pushed us to do stuff early doors,” he explains, pointing to a rule that anyone under 25 had to be pursuing interests outside of rugby.

“I had lived north and south of London for the majority of my life, so when I suggested I might play abroad when I reached 30, I was worried they might pressure me to change my mind. Instead, the club and coaches were encouraging.”

His only reservation was leaving a group of players that had become more like brothers than colleagues. “The worry of leaving Sarries was that we’d been a tight group for so long,” he reflects. “There were ten or fifteen of us who had been there for ten years plus. To leave a group where you’re that tight and still playing good rugby and winning was a tough decision.”

With former Wallabies head coach Robbie Deans as director of rugby, and the likes of Wales’ Hadleigh Parkes, Australia’s Marika Koroibete, New Zealand’s Vince Aso and the Brave Blossoms’ unmistakable Shota Horie for company at the Wild Knights, he needn’t have worried. “Everyone is in the same boat,” he says. “Foreign players come here because they want to explore something different.

“In the changing room I’m between three or four Japanese lads who don’t mind giving me a bit of shit and helping me out where needed.” And what about on the field? “It’s 100 miles an hour from the off,” he laughs. “It’s exciting. The score lines are big. It’s nice to have played a different type of rugby, but my set piece game is definitely more suited to back home.”

We’re speaking with George a month after he announced his shock retirement in late February, on his 32nd birthday. Congratulations? “Yeah, congrats is alright. I like congrats. It is a big decision so thank you. I appreciate that.”

With a World Cup just around the corner, it must have been a tough call. “I was mulling over that decision for a long time,” he admits, allowing himself to reflect for a moment. “I was getting offered more to come back to England than I was on before I left, so that was very tempting.”

Weighing up his next move, George hired a life coach. “I had to take the money out of it and think what would I want in eighteen months’ time. Going back would be to give everything my all, most likely at Sarries, and then to try to make it to another World Cup. That would have been the goal. Then I started thinking, ‘Would I have been selected? Would I have been injured?’”

Leaving the comfort of a seven-month season and returning to the eleven-month grind of the English calendar was also a factor. “I was quite ready to spend more time with my family, with my friends,” he says. “Coming here, to Japan, wasn’t a traditional decision. I was still at a good club, I was still playing for England, but I want to pack a fair chunk in [to my life].”

Ultimately, George decided his post-rugby plan had to come first, his wellness and nutrition brand. “One of my investors back home asked, ‘Can you be international level in two disciplines?’. That really got my attention.”

Just five caps short of his half century, the three-time Six Nations-winning lock admits he’d be hugely envious if England went on to lift the World Cup. However, the opportunity to retire on his own terms has been central to his decision. “Retirement is a huge topic, one that has been highlighted even more so in Covid time,” he says. “For clubs in the UK, budgets have been tightened, there have been some tough decisions and far too often I see players that get used to a certain lifestyle,” says George. “They will do one or two more years than they should but it’s good money and the easy option. Then their body will break or they will lose their love for the game, which can lead to all sorts of mental health issues.”

He’s right to err on the side of caution. A 2021 study by the UK Rugby Health Project highlights the extent of this issue as it found professional rugby players are more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, sleep and anger issues in retirement than athletes in non-contact sports. One in ten of the 83 elite rugby players who took part, said they often felt ‘life is hardly worth living’.

Another report – by the Rugby Players Association (RPA) – found 62 per cent of retired rugby players faced mental health problems post retirement, with half citing financial difficulties within the first five years. “That was something I really wanted to avoid,” says George. “If you can hedge against being one of those statistics then that’s a really valuable thing to start as early as possible. The RPA is doing good things to really drive the off-field work. We [professional rugby players] are competitive but we’re also quite lazy, that’s the issue.

“We are properly spoon fed,” he admits. “Your agent will do stuff for you, the club will provide everything and it’s too easy to just go home and play PlayStation all day – as fun as it is. There has to be some accountability on making players do stuff and making sure they’re checking in.”

How do you find this accountability? “For me, the more I speak to regular people, like pitching to buyers, or to lawyers or website designers or suppliers, the more I realise you have to prepare for that side of it. It’s not just gonna fall in place.

“Professional sport can be a bit like a boarding school,” he continues. “We are in such a bubble that when you finish, it’s like, ‘Whoa, this is real’, and it’s a huge shock. The more you can do, in terms of studying or getting involved with companies, you get an idea of what real life is like and it isn’t getting your breakfast served to you on a plate every morning.”

At first, George was drawn to the classroom. “I was quite interested in teaching,” he explains. “I was doing one day a week in a school, although I thought it would be lovely to start my own thing.” It was at this point that George’s Saracens team-mate and fellow second row and Wales international Dom Day tapped him on the shoulder.

“Dom was like, ‘You know there’s an opportunity here in CBD’. We had both recently had operations and used CBD and got good benefits out of it.”

Short for cannabidiol, CBD is the non-psychoactive compound in marijuana and hemp plants that’s been embraced by the wellness industry to alleviate anxiety, improve sleep and offer pain relief. “In rugby there is a clear appetite,” he continues. “Sleep, anxiety and recovery are the main areas people want help with. That’s a lot of what sport is about. I see CBD as part of a wellness routine, much like how you’d take your vitamin D.”

When CBD was taken off the banned substances list by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), George and Dom seized their chance to bring tested CBD products to the UK.

With their company, fourfive, established – George covering the investors and partnerships, Dom covering sales and retail – the pair leaned on Saracens and the RPA for contacts, which led to their products being stocked in Boots. “Now we’re a much more rounded wellness company, in terms of multivitamins,” George says. “And it’s taking off hugely. We have a heap of very interesting investors. Some are FTSE 100 company owners. I’m very grateful to rugby for putting us in this situation. Like I said, I didn’t want to regret not taking this opportunity in the long run.”

Pitch over, we turn our attention back to the second row’s early playing days and the grainy Dorking RFC team photo he posted on Instagram to announce his retirement. “That’s Jake Cooper-Woolley beside me,” he says, pointing to the giant occupying most of the image. “We also had Chris York, who was at Harlequins. Elliot Daly was there as well. We even had Jason Roy, who is now a professional cricketer.”

With future England internationals in their ranks, Dorking swept to victory in the National U17s Cup. “It was heavy on the social side and exactly what grassroots rugby should be about,” he continues. “Everyone stuck around after the match for barbecues and beers. It was brilliant. We’d go on trips and tours. They’d allow us to get away with murder, in terms of having a pint, and things you just can’t get enough of when you’re growing up.”

Unlike many of his former Saracens colleagues, George didn’t appear on the pathway early doors. “I was quite late,” he admits. “A lot of the lads were already in academies but when I left school at eighteen I was crap at rugby. I was poor. I was very thin. I had a lot of growth to do.”

While George was happy just playing for the post-match socials and end of season tours, one of his teachers saw his considerable potential and landed him a trial in north London with Saracens. Even then, it didn’t quite go to plan.

“It was a week long and, having spoken to the coach since, I know they were definitely getting rid of me, but on the last day I cut my knee open quite badly,” explains George. The club insisted on supporting his rehab, which involved him making a round trip to their training centre from his home in Surrey three or four times a week over the next month.

“Within that period I started putting on weight and reacted quite well to
the professional setup. All the food, all the training. They thought, let’s give him 40p a mile, get him to travel round the M25 every day and I was actually earning more than some of the academy kids who were on contracts, on mileage alone,” he says.

He eventually earned his place at Saracens, finding himself alongside Maro Itoje in the engine room of a relentless winning machine. “The biggest thing I love about my career is the amount of people I’ve been able to meet, the places it’s taken me and the experiences it’s given me,” he says.

“I’m ridiculously fortunate to have been at Sarries during that time, along with mates who you really could be as close with as your brother, when we went on a trip two or three times a season to a wild place to basically have a piss up – as well as winning trophies along the way. I couldn’t have asked for it to be better.

“You grow up, train, play with and go through highs and lows with people for ten-plus years. You know them inside out. The ability to have had the experiences is the one thing I’ll definitely take with me. Off the back of that I’ve now got the tools I can use to go into something else that I’m ridiculously excited for because I don’t want to just be a rugby player.”

George’s eleven years with Saracens must however be tinged with sadness for the way it ended, with the salary cap scandal erupting. “I had made my decision [to leave] before all of that happened,” he says. “Actually it made me think twice about leaving.” So, no hard feelings? “Look, they got punished for what they did. Rules are rules. There has to be consequences for actions and my only bugbear is I have a good understanding of what they were doing and why they were doing it, and a lot of it was just being good to try to help players prepare for [life after rugby].

“It all came from good intentions. It doesn’t take too much away from my experiences there. Some of those French and Irish budgets go through the roof in terms of salary caps so there are good arguments for and against it. But I’ve had a ridiculously good time there and I wouldn’t change it.”

As we turn to England, his Six Nations winner’s medals [2016, 2017 and 2020] and the 2019 World Cup, it’s clear George doesn’t like to dwell long on the past. “I kind of just go straight onto the next thing,” he says. “I probably will reflect once this all settles down in the next couple of months but it is odd, it’s a bit surreal. Time doesn’t pause and let you celebrate victories, you just go on to the next thing. In such a busy period that we were with club and country, it just rolled up and rattled on.”

He does, however, still have plenty of time for his former head coach, a man much beloved in George’s current home country. “I’m a huge fan of Eddie [Jones],” he says. “He’s an unbelievable coach, he’s forever wanting to grow and learn – he’s very curious too. If people saw the amount of hard work and effort that goes into his plans, they wouldn’t question a single thing about him.

“He’s an absolute dog when it comes to work,” he continues. “He is constantly trying to learn from the best, he’ll upskill himself and sometimes that works well, sometimes it doesn’t, like all coaches. As a player you know exactly how hard he’s working and how much effort goes into his programmes.”

Any run-ins? “In terms of having a disagreement?” he says. “Yeah, he’s open to it, as long as it’s not mindless. If there’s reason behind what you’re saying and you believe it, he’s very reasonable. He gets a lot of stick but I have nothing but respect for him. He’s always been super clear and very open with me. The way he got us prepped for 2019 was unbelievable and I have lots of fond memories of playing for him and with that England group.”

Presumably that includes the 19-7 World Cup semi-final victory over the All Blacks – arguably England’s finest 80 minutes in Test rugby. “We prepared really well in the five-month camp before it,” says George, dismissing any notion that his team-mates’ response to the haka inspired their performance. “We had got through the niggly bits, in terms of the team culture and we ironed them out. There was a lot of work to get through on that side, but those things put us in good stead. I wouldn’t say it was because we lined up differently for the haka.”

George is also quick to downplay the achievement. “How did it feel? Good, yeah, really good. Our next focus was just on South Africa [in the World Cup Final], which clearly we got wrong. It was amazing to win that [against New Zealand], but we had something to do a week later, which was a much bigger prize. You don’t even celebrate. We won a game, but the prize was next week and we didn’t quite get there.”

What would he have done differently? “Maybe as a group put more emphasis on the set piece,” he says. “For me it was the deciding factor in the game. As someone who is part of that set piece group, upon reflection, I would have wanted to push that more – clearly.”

George’s answers are typically matter-of-fact, devoid of unnecessary sentiment. That perhaps best illustrates why he was so uncompromising on the field and is destined to be equally committed in the boardroom. Regrets? “Not a single one,” he says, defiantly. “I’m dead happy. I’m very content with the decisions I’ve made.

“If the business goes down the pan, England lift the World Cup and Sarries win all the trophies I might have some regrets,” he admits. “But you’ve got to follow your instincts. I’m really excited for the next chapter. I’m proud to be able to say that. Not everyone has that option so I’m pretty grateful for that opportunity.”

Story by Sam Ryder

Pictures by Kaori Matsumoto and Panasonic Wild Knights

This extract was taken from issue 18 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.

George Kruis

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