High school rugby teams across Japan are becoming increasingly impacted by the country's declining birthrate as they struggle to scrape together the minimum 15 players needed to take the field.Autumn's prefectural qualifiers for this season's national championship featured many "combined" teams of students from different schools. Such teams, however, cannot represent their prefectures in the final at the Hanazono Rugby Ground in Osaka from late December, even if they win their local tournament.In Osaka, known as Japan's rugby hotbed, eight of the 41 teams in this year's tournament were made…READ FULL ARTICLE
