Andrew McKirdy is a sports writer for The Japan Times. His main beat is soccer, but he has also covered rugby, tennis, volleyball, golf and even tug-of-war. A native of the Scottish Borders, he has written for The Scotsman newspaper and organized filming for a program on Japanese soccer for ITV television.
For Andrew McKirdy's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Kashiwa Reysol striker Cristiano scored an 88th-minute equalizer to salvage a 1-1 draw against Yokohama F. Marinos on Saturday in a result that did little for either side's J. League title ambitions. Reysol went into the match at Nissan Stadium in third place in the ...
The 2017 title race has been wide open even by J. League standards, but with nine games remaining a definite top five is beginning to emerge. Defending champions Kashima Antlers lead the way by six points ahead of Kawasaki Frontale and Kashiwa Reysol, with Cerezo ...
Kimiko Date brought the curtain down on her storied tennis career after a first-round 6-0, 6-0 loss to Serbia's Aleksandra Krunic at the Japan Women's Open on Tuesday. Date, who announced late last month that this week's tournament at Ariake Tennis Forest Park would be ...
Naoki Go carefully positions his feet on the ground, slowly lifts both arms, then shuffles as if preparing to shoulder a huge imaginary weight. In the next instant, he flexes his biceps. The muscles on each arm rise like loaves in an oven. The veins ...
National team manager Vahid Halilhodzic took a swipe at his critics after guiding Japan to a place at the 2018 World Cup with a 2-0 win over Australia on Thursday night, before revealing that an unspecified issue in his private life almost forced him ...
Takuma Asano and Yosuke Ideguchi scored in each half to book Japan's place at the 2018 World Cup with a 2-0 win over Australia on Thursday. Japan went into the game at Saitama Stadium knowing that it would qualify for a sixth straight World Cup ...
Japan defender Maya Yoshida insists he and his teammates are relaxed ahead of Thursday's crunch World Cup qualifier against Australia despite rumors that manager Vahid Halilhodzic will be fired if the Samurai Blue fail to win. "To be honest it's really calm, because we all ...
Things are not going well for Lukas Podolski. The German World Cup winner made global headlines in March when he agreed to join Vissel Kobe in July, spurning advances from wealthy Chinese clubs to give the J. League its most high-profile signing in years. Upon arriving ...
Shinzo Koroki scored twice as Urawa Reds continued their nascent revival under new manager Takafumi Hori with a 2-1 win over FC Tokyo on Saturday. Urawa fired previous boss Mihailo Petrovic in late July following a string of poor results that saw the team sink ...
Kawasaki Frontale ended Kashima Antlers' nine-match unbeaten run and cut the gap on the J. League leaders with an emphatic 3-1 win on Sunday. Defending champion Kashima had won eight of nine games and drawn the other heading into the match at Todoroki Stadium, but ...
