BREWING UP A STORM

Terenure star Harrison on his Japanese adventure

- Derek FOLEY

HARRISON Brewer has played senior rugby alongside and against - some of the greatest players the world has ever seen.

He can namecheck the three Barrett brothers who played against Ireland last weekend, three of the Brave Blossoms in action today. Damien de Allende, Sam Whitelock, David Pocock...

Signed to the Panasonic Wild Knights he was, indeed, big in Japan..

Coached by Robbie Deans, PWK were topping the 2020 league when Covid hit and it was abandoned, the borders were closed with foreigners having to beat a 24-hour deadline to get out of the country.

"Even now, the Top League would be the equivalent of your Super Rugby teams, there's a lot of the top Super Rugby players playing," says Brewer.

"Because of the way their contracts work they can take a kind of sabbatical out there and, as such, earn good money.

"The top of the Top League has the big clubs such as Panasonic, Suntory, Toyota and match-days in the grounds are crazy, intense crazy and all the matches are televised.

"We played in Kumagaya Stadium on the northern outskirts of Tokyo but if you're getting a good game, like say, Panasonic-Kubota or something like that, you're getting around 30/40,000 people in Tokyo's Chofu Stadium.

A long path (Terenure College, Leinster, Te Kawau, Manawatu) finally led the Dubliner to Osaka's division two franchise NTT Docomo Red Hurricanes where, on a one-year contract, he was voted the division's most valuable player.

"I was kind of done in New Zealand (NZ Super Rugby clubs can only sign two non-All Black eligible players) so I was looking for my next gig at a point where my dad got signed over there by Red Hurricanes as head coach," he says of his father Mike Brewer.

"He couldn't bring me in as a son so I had to go over there on the trial basis for three months and they ended up signing me for a year on the back of that.