Chugoku League Teams: Division I
Renofa Yamaguchi
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For such a new club, Renofa Yamaguchi has a long history. In fact, the team can trace its origins all the way back to 1949, when a group of teachers in Yamaguchi prefecture formed a team known as Yamaguchi Teachers Soccer Club. This team spent five decades playing with relatively limited success in the Chugoku Regional League, never once managing to win a title but never getting relegated either. It wasnt until 1998 that the team had to endure its first spell in the Yamaguchi prefectural league, bouncing back after two seasons but showing signs that it was starting to run out of vitality. Yamaguchi Teachers were relegated again at the end of 2003, and both players and team officials were forced to give some thought to their future.
After winning the Yamaguchi Prefectural title in 2004, and regaining a spot in the regional league, the team rounded up some financial backing and decided to "Renovate" the team. At this point people in the area were starting to consider, for the first time, the idea of building a local football team to vie for professional status. Renovation was exactly what the team needed, and when the question of what to name the new club arose, someone apparently said: "Hey I know . . . lets call it "Renovation".
No, although we WISH we were joking, thats exactly what happened. The team adopted the name "Renofa", replacing the "v" with an "f" because (at least according to the team's website) they wanted to indicate that the team would "F"ight, but always play "F"air, and they hoped to do just "F"ine.
Again, you just couldnt make up something like that if you tried.
At the moment the club has a great deal of work to do if it ever hopes to make a bid for professional status. Among other things the home stadium has a capacity of just 3,850. However, at least Renofa seems to be on the right track. A first-place finish in the Chugoku League in 2008 marked the team's first Regional title ever. For the time being, Renofa is just aiming for a spot in the JFL. If and when it does clear that hurdle, the club will begin addressing the issues related to a J.League bid.
Team Results: 2005-present
| Year | . | Pts | GP | W | D | L | GF | GA | G.Dif |
| 2005 |
7 |
9 |
12 |
1 |
4 |
7 |
11 |
21 |
-10 |
| 2006 |
4 |
25 |
14 |
7 |
3 |
4 |
26 |
28 |
-2 |
| 2007 |
3 |
25 |
16 |
6 |
4 |
7 |
33 |
46 |
-13 |
| 2008 |
1 |
38 |
16 |
11 |
5 |
0 |
45 |
15 |
+30 |
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= Yamaguchi Teachers |
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= Renofa Yamaguchi |
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Dezzolla Shimane
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Dezzolla Shimane is even newer to the ranks of "theoretically" J.League-bound clubs than Renofa. It got its start in 2001, when a team was formed in northern Hiroshima Prefecture under the name "FC Central Chugoku. Since Hiroshima is the largest city in the region -- indeed, the only city with a real "metropolitan area" of surrounding suburbs and towns -- the Chugoku League has always been dominated by clubs from Hiroshima. Of the 14 teams that have been members of the Chugoku League within the past 10 years, ten are/were based in Hiroshima, though that predominance is starting to decline as Prefectural League clubs from the other towns and cities develop fan bases and become more competitive.
FC Central Chugoku saw an opportunity to claim an "untapped" regional base for its own, and in 2003 it entered the Shimane Prefectural league, moving its home base to the city of Matsue, in Shimane Prefecture. Shimane is a very rural place with only one significant city, Matsue. However, it is the home of Japan's second most important Shinto shrine, and therefore, like Ise, has a symbolic importance that far exceeds its population of economic strength.
After climbing through the ranks and earning promotion to the Chugoku Regional League in 2006, the team began to consider its future possibilities, and though the club has not yet expressed a clear intention to pursue professional status and a spot in the J.League, that does seem to be in the back of the minds of fans. To help give impetus to the club's development, FC Central Chugoku changed its name in 2008, becoming "Dezzolla Shimane Esporte Clube". If Renofa Yamaguchi still has a long way to go before it can consider applying for J.League associat status, Dezzolla is even further down on the learning curve. From an organizational perspective it is still taking its very first steps. However, the club has managed to perform fairly well on the pitch. Second-place finishes in 2006 and 2007 show that Dezzolla at least has some potential, though it is likely to be a decade or more before that potential can be turned into the base for a professional football team.
Team Results: 2005-present
| Year | . | Pts | GP | W | D | L | GF | GA | G.Dif |
| 2005 (Shimane Lg) |
1 |
30 |
10 |
10 |
0 |
0 |
75 |
4 |
+71 |
| 2006 (Chugoku Lg) |
2 |
34 |
14 |
11 |
0 |
3 |
50 |
16 |
+34 |
| 2007 (Chugoku Lg) |
2 |
30 |
14 |
10 |
0 |
4 |
42 |
26 |
+16 |
| 2008 (Chugoku Lg) |
5 |
26 |
16 |
8 |
2 |
6 |
26 |
26 |
+0 |
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= FC Central Chugoku |
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= Dezzolla Shimane |
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FC Ube Yahhh-Man
Ube Yahhh-Man is the new kid on the block in the Chugoku League. It was formed in 2002, in the tiny mining-pit city of Ube, in Yamaguchi Prefecture. The team has changed its name no less than four times over the six years of its existence, but obviously there has been a central theme running through these many changes. After starting off in 2002 as "Club Yahhh-Man", the team changed its name two years later to "Yahhh-Man SC Ube". A year later, it was reorganized under the name "F. C. Ube Yahhh-Man", and in 2008 this was further refined, to "FC Ube Yahhh-Man". Do jah dig what ahm sayin man ? Yahhh man, its very clear to me now.
Apparently the team's mascot is a pink pelican. I swear, I am NOT making this up.
As you may have noticed from our discussion of Renofa Yamaguchi and Dezzolla Shimane, up above, people in Chugoku are still small-town folks. You can get a pretty clear idea of the informality that reigns in the Chugoku region, even in formal business organizations, by looking at how these teams approach the project of building a J.League team. But when it comes to informality, Ube Yahh-Man has the others beat by a mile. But why bother with a long-winded explanation. The "official player photos" of the team members, posted on Ube Yahh-Man's website, tell the whole story . . . .
Yah Man. That just about says it all.
JFE Nishi Nihon
Team Name:
JFE Nishi Nihon
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Team Logo & Mascot:
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JFE Nishi Nihon is the company team of JFE Holdings (Nippon Steel)'s main steel plant in Western Japan. Located in Mizushima, this plant is the next-door neighbor of Mitsubishi Mizushima, which earned promotion to the JFL in 2004 ending what had been the Chugoku Region's biggest "local rivalry". However, JFE has been on the wrong side of that rivalry for most of its history.
Established in 1973, the club advanced to the Chugoku Regional League in 1997, but has never been one of the league's strongest teams. JFE narrowly avoided relegation last season, and the team has never finished higher than fifth place. Nevertheless, it does have one of the largest corporate backers of any club in the region (JFE's Mizushima Works rivals even Mazda Motor in the number of employees). A bit of effort by the parent MIGHT allow the team to move up the table, but we do not expect it to happen this season.
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Hitachi Kasado
Team Name:
Hitachi Kasado
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Team Logo:
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Hitachi Kasado is another heavy industrial plant located in Yamaguchi Prefecture, and its industrial business makes it a rival of JFE Nishi Nihon and NTN Okayama, as well as Mitsubishi Mizushima, whose football team has now moved on to bigger and better things in the JFL. The company makes railroad equipment including the "bullet trains" (shinkansen) that are one of the icons of Japanese industrial progress. The company's football team, however, is almost as uncompetitive as those of JFE and NTN. Hitachi Kasado has never finished higher than fourth place in the Chugoku League, and is not likely to do so this year, either.
Nevertheless, as interest in football develops throughout the Chugoku region, company teams such as JFE, Hitachi Kasado, NTN Okayama and Mitsubishi Mizushima are charting independent courses as football teams that are devoutly amateur and intend to remain that way. So long as blue-collar companies like these have young male workers, the company teams that they spawn will play an important part in the football landscape of Japan. |
Other Teams in the Chugoku League
Rounding out the field in Chugoku are the company teams Mazda SC, NTN Okayama, Japan Oil Mizushima and Sagawa Kyubin Chugoku. The only one which has shown past signs of competitiveness is Sagawa Kyubin, which like most members of the Sagawa Group is able to put together a fairly competitive squad at the Regional or Prefectural levels, but rarely performs well enough to challenge for a promotion spot to the JFL.
Last, but certainly not least is the entirely independent, totally amateur club "Genki SC", a group of 18 young men from Shimane prefecture who played football at the high school level and decided to form a team of their own after graduation. The ultimate David in a field of goliaths, Genki SC has no organizational structure, no corporate sponsor, no official fan club, and the only member of its coaching staff is the father of one of the players. Against all odds, the team has somehow managed to battle its way into the Chugoku League. Now thats what I call Genki! Though certainly the top candidate for relegation in 2009, we hope the team can maintain a spot in the big time, if only because Genki SC offers such a great angle for sportswriters who are looking for a story.
Mitsubishi Mizushima (Mizushima Red Adamant)
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The history of this club extends back to 1946, when in the immediate aftermath of World War II, football fans in a decimated Okayama prefecture decided to form a club at the Mitsubishi auto factory, as a focus for their interest and as a much-needed opportunity for recreation. In 1965, Mitsubishi Mizushima was among the founding members of the Okayama Prefectural League Division 1, although it was not until 1980 that the team was able to participate at the Regional level, in the Chugoku League.
The club survived only three years at the higher level before being relegated back to the Prefectural League, but in a second bid for advancement, in 1991, the team returned to the Chugoku Regional league in a big way, and were crowned champions for the first time the following year. The club then entered the most successful phase in its history, winning the title again in 1999 and then claiming the championship for three years running in 2002, 03 and 04.
2004 ended with Mizushima taking part in the Nationwide Regional League Championship Tournament, where narrow wins over Shizuoka FC and AS Laranja Kyoto earned them a place in the final group stage. Once there, the boys in red drew with the Kanto League's Luminoso Sayama before beating Ryutsu Keizai University and Kyushu champions Honda Lock to make it through to the JFL.
When they looked back on the 2005 season, their first in the JFL, Mitsubishi Mizushima collectively and honestly described it as having been "an ordeal". With two wins and two draws in thirty matches, the Okayama prefecture-based club ended the season with just eight points. Indeed, on two separate occasions during the campaign they endured excruciating eleven-game losing streaks. Not surprisingly, given their inability to cope with the level of competition, the team finished dead last in the JFL table.
Early in 2005, the club adopted an organisational structure that makes them legally independent of Mitsubishi - a pre-requisite of J-League membership, to which they evidently aspire. This would certainly be a boost for football in a part of the country that has only one other team of any note -- Sanfrecce Hiroshima. But Mizushima will need to work hard to develop the necessary infrastructure, both on and off the pitch.
One step in the right direction involved the creation of a supporters' organisation named "the Red Adamant Club" (a take-off on the "Red Diamonds" in Urawa . . ."adamant" is another word for diamond). The allusion appears to be that, as part of the Mitsubishi group, Mizushima are a sister club to the J1 giants. This may have created a more powerful force than the company expected, however, as fans have begun calling the team "Mizushima Red Adamant", in an echo of the grassroots campaign that wrenched Tokushima Vortis away from parent company Otsuka Pharmaceutical. The local fans are already agitating for more independence from Mitsubishi Motors, as well as for a more aggressive campaign to earn J.League membership. It seems quite likely that the team will eventually be compelled to change their name to "Mizushima Red Adamant". As folks in Okayama are discovering, once a company lets "its" team develop a solid local following, they soon discover who holds the balance of power in the world of Japanese football. (Surprise! -- it isnt the corporations!)
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Momo-suke & Komomo
The Okayama area is famed as the supposed home of the storybook character "Momotaro". Okayama City even named its main sports stadium "Momotaro Stadium. Thus, there should be no reason to question the reasons for Mizushima's choice of mascot. Hopefully by the time the team reaches the J2 someone will have given this kid an image makeover. For the time being, though, Momo-suke is a suitable mascot for a still-amateurish team. |
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Team Results: 2005-present
| Year | # | Pts | GP | W | D | L | GF | GA | G.Dif |
| 2005 |
16 |
8 |
30 |
2 |
2 |
26 |
24 |
85 |
-61 |
| 2006 |
17 |
24 |
32 |
6 |
6 |
20 |
28 |
71 |
-43 |
| 2007 |
15 |
35 |
34 |
11 |
2 |
21 |
36 |
53 |
-17 |
| 2008 |
18 |
16 |
34 |
3 |
7 |
24 |
30 |
76 |
-46 |
| 2009 |
18 |
18 |
34 |
4 |
6 |
24 |
28 |
69 |
-41 |
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