England advance to Rugby World Cup quarter-finals as Japan beat 14-man Samoa

Japan were more disciplined in defence and more dangerous in attack as they built a 17-point lead with a man advantage with 15 minutes to go. But Samoa struck twice as Japan ended up clinging on to their World Cup hopes.

Japan can ensure they join England in the quarter-finals if they beat Argentina on the last day of pool matches on October 8. Samoa, who play England last, require Chile to upset Argentina to stand a chance.

"It is knockout footy for us, we have got to try beat a tough Argentina team next week," said Japan full-back Lomano Lemeki.

Thursday's game pivoted on a period of 16 minutes on either side of half time which brought three tries, two for Japan and one for Samoa and three cards, one for Japan and two for Samoa, the second of which, for Ben Lam, turned into red.

Japan took the lead after 13 minutes, swinging the ball across the field for flanker Pieter Labuschagne to smash through the remnants of the stretched Samoan defence by the left corner flag.

For the next 20 minutes, Samoa emphatically won the close physical battles, dominating the rucks and mauls and drawing a string of penalties but scoring only a 25th-minute penalty kicked by Alai D'Angelo Leuila. Rikiya Matsuda quickly replied.

Japan instead struck the next big blow. 

After winger Kotaro Matsushima burst down the right, the Japanese worked the ball quickly across the field where, once again, a flanker, this time Michael Leitch, was left with a short charge in at the corner.

As Matsuda kicked his second conversion, Samoa scrum-half Jonathan Taumateine trudged off, earning a yellow card for knocking a Japanese player over in the build up to the try.

It seemed the Japanese rope-a-dope was working.

But as Samoa launched another series of