England U20s hooker Craig Wright: 'It’s a real weapon of ours'

Craig Wright for sure enjoyed the exhilarating buzz on Sunday of England qualifying for this Friday’s World Rugby U20 Championship final in Cape Town.

With Ireland eventually beaten 31-20, the hooker had just finished belting out Zombie in his team’s dressing room when he strolled down to the spacious central area of the DHL Stadium dressing room tunnel to take a few questions and provide a few understandably giddy answers.

He was so in the moment that he arrived bare-chested, a large left-sided tattoo obvious for everyone to see before he was offered an England tracksuit top by his quick-thinking team media handler. The camera rolled.

“It feels absolutely amazing,” boomed the mustachioed front-rower who is serving his club apprenticeship with Northampton having co-captained at Felstead School after picking up the game at Braintree.

“It was definitely a tough game, swaying both sides, scores were level at one point, they’d be winning at one point, we’d be winning at one point but we managed to prevail and came out with the win in the end.

“We like to pride ourselves on being a full 80 team, so playing for the full 80 minutes, being able to put our game, how we play on top of them. it’s absolutely amazing to come away with that and we managed to find ourselves towards the end.”

England certainly did. Having gone to the wire to defeat South Africa five days earlier while Ireland had their match cancelled against Australia, Mark Mapletoft’s team were slow to get going.

“Definitely (it had an effect). They didn’t play. We’re coming away with sore bodies but still, we don’t use that as an excuse, we came away and recovered as best as we could, tried to put as much of our rugby as we can on the pitch and showcase it.”

They went behind to a slickly taken first-minute try and it wasn’t until Wright held his width and dived over in the corner from a Ben Redshaw assist that they got on the board on 25 minutes.

It was a demonstration of classic patience from the youngster as he waited and waited for the ball to come back to him after the lineout he threw was worked across to the far side of the pitch and then back over in his direction in a multi-phase play typical of the English way of playing.

“It feels amazing. Honestly, towards the end of the game, I was so focused I had forgotten I had scored but it’s definitely a great feeling when you come in (to the dressing room afterwards), almost a surreal feeling. But nice, absolutely amazing.

“You don’t get many opportunities to go through to a final, especially in this sort of (age-grade) environment, people don’t even get one. So for us to actually have that opportunity to go through to the final and have that opportunity for some silverware is amazing, absolutely brilliant. I know the boys are buzzing and I’m absolutely ecstatic.”

Aside from his try and the 11-point win, the other reality that had Wright beaming was the six-zero penalty count at the scrum in favour of England, a dominance that would have been more if the referee had whistled instead of allowing the ball to be played away from other dominant set-piece engagements.

“Definitely, we pride ourselves on our scrum and that is something we train and that’s how we convey it in our games, it’s a real weapon of ours. Unfortunate not to get as many scrum penalties as we’d like but obviously very dominant in that space. Really happy with that.”

Amidst the outpouring of joy, there were tears. Wright doesn’t have family on the trip but he still met an old mentor in the crowd post-game in Cape Town and there was also an emotional call home to England.

“My family are at home but I managed to meet my old school teacher Andrew Le Chevalier, so I was really pleased to meet him. I Facetimed my dad straightaway so a few tears from there, a few tears from me but absolutely excited.”

When Wright spoke with RugbyPass, the France-New Zealand semi-final was just about to get started. England were going out to watch some of that clash in person before jumping on their bus for the short spin back to their hotel and a celebratory night that involved watching the English football team play in the Euro 2024 final.

“We’re going away to watch the Euros, recover, just best prepare our bodies and look forward to who we are playing against in the final. We played France in the Six Nations, won against them. I’d like to play the All Blacks, I’ve never had the opportunity but either team, we are going to prepare as best as we can and do the best we can to try and win the title.”

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