Baby Boks confident of bouncing back at U-20 World Champs

The Junior Springboks will need to up their game for the rest of the tournament, head coach Bafana Nhleko admits, after they fell to Italy in their first defeat of the World Rugby U-20 Championships in Paarl on Thursday.

Competing in horrendous conditions, the SA side lost 34-26 in their second match of the global age group showpiece.

“Today, we were good at times, scoring some beautiful tries and producing some really strong defensive moments. At others, it wasn’t so great. Unfortunately, Italy were in it for longer and got the rewards,” Nhleko said after the game.

“We’ve been watching Italy play in the U-20 Six Nations, and we know how good they are. We just weren’t good enough today, in terms of the way we started and the penalties we conceded.

“They got good ascendancy in the maul and put us under pressure. We couldn’t get going as a result. When we did have opportunities, we didn’t take a few of them.”

Playoff battle

After winning their opening match against Georgia last week, however, the Junior Boks were still in the hunt for the playoffs in a wide open Pool C battle.

While they were lying second in their group, behind Argentina and ahead of Italy, all three teams were equal on five points, separated only by goal difference. Georgia were also still in contention, having settled in fourth position just one point behind.

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In order to keep their trophy hopes alive, the home team needed to beat Argentina in a must-win fixture at Athlone Stadium on Tuesday, in their final pool match ahead of the semi-finals.

Nhleko believed they could progress to the last four, in search of the SA team’s first U-20 world title since 2012, but they needed to maintain their intensity and their form throughout their crunch game against Argentina.

“If your set-piece, kicking game and defence is functioning, you can put yourself into a position to build pressure, and then you can put points on the board,” Nhleko said, “but you need to be at it for 80 minutes.”