The first day of autumn brought derby day delight for Shimizu S-Pulse and Omiya Ardija, as the two away teams won the Shizuoka and Saitama derby respectively.

Thousands of orange clad supporters made the seventy kilometre trip to Ecopa Stadium in Fukuroi to see their team take on bitter local rivals Jubilo Iwata.

Shimizu won 2-1 thanks to a Cho Jae-Jin brace earlier in the season, and S-Pulse did the double over their local rivals when the Korean striker scored a last minute goal to hand Shimizu a 1-0 victory.

The win sees Shimizu move to within a point of third placed Kashima Antlers on the table. 

The real story was at Saitama Stadium, however, where a crowd of 49,910 watched mainly in disbelief as second-from-bottom Omiya Ardija kept their season alive by beating city neighbours and league leaders Urawa Reds.

Hiroshi Morita scored the only goal of the game on the hour mark to hand Omiya a result that has implications at both ends of the table. With Gamba Osaka thrashing an injury-ridden Nagoya Grampus Eight 4-1 at Mizuho, the Osakans have pulled themselves back to within a point of league leaders Urawa. Omiya Ardija, meanwhile, are now just one point behind fifteenth placed Oita Trinita after yet another absorbing round of J-League action.

Just kidding folks, just kidding! I thought one way to get everyone interested in Japanese football is simply to talk about the English Premier League.

It seems that interest in Japanese football is on the wane, even *gasp* right here in Japan! While I can understand that Kashiwa Reysol vs FC Tokyo might not capture the attention of your average fan from Barcelona to Bury, I think it's a little concerning that media coverage of the J-League in Japan is plummeting as fast as the attendance figures of certain clubs.

According to The Rising Sun News - which is by far and away the best resource on Japanese football...on the web or elsewhere, interest in the J-League is dwindling, both in the media and with your more casual fans. And on the issue of decreasing interest in the league, The Rising Sun News has been most vocal on the topic of the poor standard of refereeing in Japan. I can see why.

When Shimizu S-Pulse took on Yokohama F. Marinos in the League Cup last weekend, I was really not looking forward to attending the match. That was for the simple reason that, in the previous two matches, both against Kashiwa Reysol - once in the J-League and once in the League Cup, S-Pulse had been on the receiving end of some seriously dubious refereeing. 

I took it with a grain of salt, since in 2006, Shimizu had been the beneficiaries of poor refereeing on numerous occasions. And they were the beneficiaries once again on Saturday afternoon, when referee Masaaki Iemoto gave a straight red card to Omiya's new signing Mauricio Salles just eight minutes into his Omiya debut.

The send-off probably had little impact on the outcome of the match, since Shimizu were playing Omiya off the park anyway. But what impact will it have on the miserly 7,737 crowd that bothered to turn up at Komaba Stadium - where standing behind the goals offers you the same kind of view that you might have if you were standing on the moon? 

I think I know. People stop coming. And who can blame them? When they can just as easily sit at home and watch Liverpool vs Arsenal instead, there's little incentive for the casual fan to get out to a windswept Japanese stadium, only to watch their team's chances disappear down the drain - which is where any credibility that J-League referees once had, has long since disappeared.