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Georgia U20s repeat 2023's heroics, beating England to share series
By Liam Heagney
England have suffered a repeat of last year’s build-up to the World Rugby U20 Championship as a 17-45 defeat on Wednesday in a sweltering Tbilisi left them sharing a pre-tournament series one-all with Georgia.
Defeat 12 months ago ultimately didn’t hamper Mark Mapletoft’s side as they progressed through their pool in South Africa to make the semi-finals. They will now look for a similar outcome when they again travel to Cape Town on the back of a loss in another shared series with the Georgians.
The English picked up the thread of their recent Six Nations title-winning campaign when convincingly beating their Eastern European hosts 31-7 last Friday.
However, Mapletoft opted to go into Wednesday’s rematch with a starting XV showing a dozen changes and an opposition coached by Levan Maisashvili, Georgia’s former Rugby World Cup 2023 coach, gleefully picked them off in an eight-try contest in which the hosts accounted for five.
England had jumped 5-3 up with an eighth-minute maul try from Nathan Michelow, but they fell into arrears 10 minutes later through a Giorgi Spanderashvili try and they never caught up.
A try disallowed for an illegal block on Afolabi Fasogbon seemed set to keep the visitors in the hunt heading towards the break, but the prop soon infringed himself on the stroke of half-time and was yellow carded.
When his sin-binning elapsed 10 minutes into the second-half, England, a man down and struggling in the 30 degree heat, had gone from trailing 5-13 to 5-28 following the concession of two more tries. They hit back quickly enough when the contest became 15 versus 15 again, replacement Archie Green, the son of ex-England and Wasps prop Will, going over.
However, a pair of tries from winger Tariel Ballikashvili on 60 and 63 minutes extinguished any notion of a comeback and England were instead made to settle for a 72nd-minute consolation try from full-back Ioan Jones.
England begin their U20 Championship versus Argentina on June 29 followed by games against Fiji and hosts South Africa. Georgia, meanwhile, open versus Australia before facing Ireland and Italy.
- Click here for all the details on the upcoming World Rugby U20 Championship in South Africa
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Latest Comments
So was I right to infer that you assumed a 1:1 correspondence between points and places?
If so why were you so evasive about admitting that?
I don't have much of an opinion about how it should be done. It isn't my preferred system as I think there should be a significant number of teams who qualify directly as a result of their performance in the previous year's CC. But I think 6/5/5 or 6/6/4 would probably make the most sense as splits if they ever did go over to the UEFA model.
Go to commentsStopping the drop off out of high school has to be of highest priority - there is a lot of rugby played at high school level, but the pathways once they leave are not there. Provincial unions need support here from Rugby Canada to prop up that space.
Concussion is also an issue that has seen sports like ultimate frisbee gain ground. All competitions and clubs should integrate touch rugby teams into their pathways. Whenever clubs play XVs games, they should also be taking 20mins to play a competitive touch rugby game too.
Then take rugby branding and move it away from the fringe game that only crazy people play and make it an exercise-first sport that caters to everyone including people who don't want contact.
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