Four World Rugby U20 Championship semi-final talking points

Saturday’s lengthy feast of Test rugby was quite something, with game after game after game providing plenty of entertainment and multiple talking points. Now, we are set to do it again on Sunday with the best that age-grade rugby from around the world offers at the World Rugby U20 Championship in South Africa.

It was last Tuesday following match day three when the appetising semi-final line-up was confirmed, pitting Rugby Championship champions New Zealand against defending World Rugby champions France just 10 days after they served up a July 4 thriller in Stellenbosch while Six Nations champions England will go head-to-head with runners-up Ireland 18 weeks after they conjured a compelling 32-all classic at Bath.

Similar type fireworks are expected in both these fixtures which will be played at the Cape Town Stadium, the iconic home of the Stormers whose franchise name is no longer a mystery to anyone who has been in the area in the last few weeks for the Championship.

The Junior Boks are also on the day’s big stadium schedule, kicking off the action with a rematch versus Argentina, southern hemisphere rivals who swatted them aside on July 4 in Stellenbosch with a 31-12 performance that oozed clinically delivered, brute force forward play.

These three fixtures will naturally hog the limelight, but the Danie Craven Stadium undercard won’t be without its frills either as Australia versus Wales, which tops the bill in the university town, should be an eye-catching clash of styles following an afternoon featuring Georgia against Fiji and Italy taking on Spain. Here are the match day RugbyPass talking points:

The Anglo-Irish busy or rest puzzle

A puzzle heading into Sunday’s semi-finals is deciphering which country is better placed heading into the England versus Ireland clash.

Whereas the English dug out a masterful 86th-minute win over South Africa in the mud and the puddles of Athlone last Tuesday night, the Irish were long gone from the stadium on the Cape Flats back to their waterfront hotel following the cancellation of their pool decider with Australia that was scheduled on the same pitch earlier in the day.

The puzzle is whether playing and having a five-day turnaround to the semi-final will suit England more than Ireland having a 10-day break leading into the DHL Stadium showdown between this year’s leading Six Nations teams.

England are unquestionably battle-hardened and if their brotherhood needed any more glue, it certainly got it with the manner of their late, late win over the Junior Boks. Winning with such a late try after a good performance can surely only quicken the rejuvenation of tired bodies, and you have to wonder if it has given them a semi-final edge compared to Ireland’s inactivity.

The last time Willie Faloon’s team played was in the July 4 win over Georgia. That was another dramatic clock-in-the-red success, the Irish scoring in the 83rdminute with a 24-phase play, their jubilation – in contrast to England’s late glory – was tempered by the fact that they performed poorly in a match they were expected to win with a degree of comfort.

How they go now having had a 10-day lay-off will be intriguing against an opposition with a five-day turnaround.

Our Jono Gibbes soft spot

First, a confession. We have always had a soft spot for New Zealand U20s boss Jono Gibbes ever since he took a gamble in 2008 and got hitched to the state of flux that was underperforming Leinster. Whereas the Irish club now attracts coaches with considerable CVs, it certainly wasn’t that way 16 years ago when an unproven Michael Cheika realised he needed to shake up his staff.

He took a punt on Gibbes, who was fresh out of the game as an injury-retired player and what an apprenticeship it turned out to be for the former loosie, cracking Europe in his first season under Cheika and doing so a few more times under Joe Schmidt.

Apart from a very short-lived stint at Waikato in 2018, where you could comfortable count the months of his brief stay with the fingers on one hand, the 47-year-old has spent his entire coaching career flitting between Ireland and France, so his emergence back home as the New Zealand age-grade team boss was always likely to be a sidestep to re-emerge in Europe.

So it has proven, Gibbes being confirmed as a consultant at Lyon in the Top 14 just eight days after he coached his Baby Blacks team to its wonderful second-half comeback win over France in Stellenbosch. New Zealand appeared a beaten docket that evening trooping off at the break 0-11 down and in dire need of inspiration.

Gibbes earned his corn in the sheds as the XV that returned was unrecognisable, clocking up huge metres in the contact (an 80-minute tally of 344 to France’s 197) and playing a dynamic offloading game that had the four-try bonus point bagged well before the end-game antics that were Rico Simpson’s game-winning penalty kick that needed a TMO review to confirm it went between the posts.

It can’t be said what, if any, influence this performance had on Lyon contracting Gibbes. But the calibre of the display and the game management from the sideline was a reminder that the form is temporary, class is permanent adage applies to coaches as much as it does to players.

It had to be wounding for the Kiwi to be unceremoniously dumped by Clermont in January 2023 halfway into a three-year deal, but coaching kids at a level where New Zealand have underperformed in recent times has been an excellent re-energiser.

His only issue now is he needs to come up with another game-winning plan this Sunday to beat the French just 10 days after a brilliantly executed heist did his reputation a world of good.

Argentina's Efrain Elias and England's Finn Carnduff (Photo by World Rugby)

Two classy team leaders

Reports emerged the other week that a couple of Gallagher Premiership clubs, including Bristol, were flying to South Africa to see if they could recruit some youthful promise for their teams. With 360 players originally registered across the 12 squads before some injury replacements occurred, it should be a shooting fish-in-a-barrel-type exercise given the calibre of talent on show in Cape Town.

For sure there are some excellent value-for-money gems to be unearthed. What has struck RugbyPass, though, is the calibre of some of the leaders on show, namely England captain Finn Carnduff and Argentina skipper Efrain Elias.

Blindside Carnduff, who can also pack down at lock, is very much joined at the hip with Leicester where he is about to embark on his first senior contract, and it will be no surprise to see him become a one-club legend given the upward trajectory so far of his fledgling career.

Ditto Elias, another lock who doubles up as a back row. He has risen to prominence via the Dogos franchise in the Super Rugby Americas and is reportedly set to join Toulouse once the U20 Championship is over.

While rotation is a feature at the tournament during the pool stages due to the testing five-day turnaround between games, neither Carnduff nor Elias have an off button as they have started for the countries in all three group games and will lead again this Sunday, Carnduff in the Championship semi-final against Ireland and Elias in the rankings play-off versus South Africa.

Sifting through their stats, Carnduff, who was rested for the second 40 against Fiji, has so far made 30 tackles, 25 carries, won two turnovers, scored against the Junior Boks and led a tasty pack of forwards around the park with precision.

Elias, meanwhile, has played all 240 minutes, making 41 tackles, 33 carries, won three turnovers, scored twice and has inspired those around him similar to Carnduff. It has been brilliant to see them strut their stuff with such maturity.

Having a heart in a difficult week

There was some great footage of England on top of Table Mountain in the early stages of the tournament, their blue sky climb up in a cable car recorded for posterity in Embedded, the behind-the-scenes RugbyPass TV documentary series on their 2024 campaign.

The producers were fortunate. These last few weeks in Cape Town have seen the famed mountain playing hide and seek, being left invisible day after day due to the ongoing mid-winter cloud cover in the region.

With seeing the sights scratched from the list of things to do by players during their downtime in between games, it was good to see six countries represented at an exercise this past week where they checked out how recyclable plastic waste collected from the team hotels and stadiums is recycled into bricks.

The terrible weather in the region has sharpened the local media focus on the intolerable conditions that some sections of the population have to live in, so seeing U20s players taking an interest in how collected waste is converted for use in sustainable developments was a good news story in a difficult week.

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