Junior Boks to play for pride in seventh-place match at U20 Champs

The Junior Springboks now only have pride to play for at the World Rugby U20 Championship after losing to Argentina, for the second time in the tournament, in the fifth-place semi-final in Cape Town on Sunday.

Bafana Nhleko’s team will now play for seventh place at the “Junior World Cup” against either Wales or Australia on Friday.

The Junior Boks lost 34-24 to Argentina on Sunday after also going down to the South Americans earlier in the tournament. They also lost to England in pool play, but beat Fiji in their opening game of the competition.

Nhleko said his side’s tendency to drop the intensity at important moments of the match against Argentina spoiled several good opportunities.

Disappointing defence

“There were lots of pressure releases today,” said Nhleko.

“We would play in moments and get good momentum, then we’d release the pressure with an error or poor decision making and then we’d would find ourselves on the backfoot again.

“We started well in the lineouts, and when they started to get tired, we fell off with our detail to keep the pressure on them.

“Those are the opportunities that we lost, and those moments really hurt us. Today, the most disappointing thing was around the defence, which is usually our strong point.”

Nhleko summed up the mood in the camp: “Obviously we’re down in terms of how we feel because the result wasn’t what we had hoped for. The reality is that we must get up and go again because we have a game again on Friday.”

In terms of finishing the tournament, Nhleko said: “We know people are hurting, and the team hurt as much.

“The performance was good in parts but not good enough for the full 80 minutes, but we have one more to go, and we must bounce back and hopefully finish on a better note. Now we must play for some pride.”