Many japanese only get ten days of vacation a year, which are often difficult to take. So if you take a few days off to train and then have a 10 day tour, you have a lot of explaining to do to the family and company.
When the Yanks were meant to play in Japan in 2003 ( but pulled out) it meant that lot of our top players
had no vacation time to make the test in America.
mind you in '03 a lot of our best players were uni students and the tour was during exams so they could not come either.
But anyway, the number of players on teh filed and their positioning looks like 13s to me.
What was teh score?