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Live blog: Junior World Championship in South Africa – day one
By Liam Heagney
It's day one at the Glastonbury of age-grade international rugby, the men's U20s Rugby World Cup in South Africa with Paarl and Stellenbosch hosting three matches each. Usually, the Junior World Championship is an annual event, but this latest renewal has been four years in the making due to the pandemic.
France are the reigning champions having won the tournament in Argentina in 2019, but the players who helped them to that back-to-back title triumph have long since grown up and gotten on with the business of forging their professional club team careers.
The French class of 2023 will get their campaign going with the day’s opening match in Stellenbosch versus Japan, by which stage the result will already be known in the Paarl opener featuring Argentina versus Italy.
England versus Six Nations Grand Slam champions Ireland is the juicy second fixture on the Paarl Gimnasium bill that will be rounded off by New Zealand taking on Wales.
Meanwhile, 30kms south along the R101 and R44 at the Danie Craven Stadium, Australia, who recently shared their two-match series away to the Baby Blacks, will tackle Fiji before the round one schedule wraps up with South Africa hosting Georgia, who shocked England in Tbilisi in their final warm-up. It all makes for an intriguing day’s action on the RugbyPass live blog:
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Latest Comments
I think we need to get innovative with the new laws.
Now red cards are only 20 minutes, Razor should send Finau on a head hunting mission to hospitalise their 10 with a shoulder to the chops.
Give the conspiracy theorists a win.
Go to commentsEngland played well enough to win but couldnt score when they needed to and couldnt defend a couple of X-Factor moments from Telea which was ultimately the difference. They needed to hold the ball more and make the AB's make more tackles. Territorially they were good for the first 60. Defending their lead and playing pragmatic rugby in the last 20 was silly. The AB's always had the potential to come back. England still have a long way to go, definite progress would have been shown had they won but it seems they are still stuck where they were shortly after the six nations and their tour to NZ
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