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Grey: The 'wet tournament' lesson that Junior Wallabies must learn
By
Liam Heagney
Nathan Grey had no excuses after seeing his Junior Wallabies soundly beaten 30-10 by Ireland at the Junior World Championship. Australia had come into their second match at the U20s tournament in South Africa confident that they had the ability to get the better of the Irish, the Six Nations age-grade title holders.
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However, aside from one breakout moment of genius support play that resulted in their only try being scored in the opening half, they were ground down by Ireland in the Paarl rain and they must now beat unbeaten England on Tuesday in Athlone to keep alive their greatly reduced chances of reaching the semi-finals.
Grey insisted that Australia were fully aware of the style of play that the Irish would bring, but they didn’t have the tools necessary to put a halt to the opposition.
“We certainly knew what Ireland were going to bring to the table around that set-piece and their pick-and-go in the A zone,” explained the head coach to RugbyPass.
“They were able to do that. We sort of gave them too many opportunities to be able to do that and they were too good, their ability to execute, their ability to capitalise on those opportunities.
“We created a few and weren’t good enough to put them away. Against a quality team, you are not going to get many chances, so we didn’t take ours and they took theirs.
“It’s wet and heavy and it was the same for both teams,” he added. “It has been a wet tournament and it is going to continue to be. It’s important that guys adjust their playing style accordingly. When we play the way we want to play we can create opportunities and back our skill level to be able to score some tries which is great, but we weren’t able to do that consistently over the match.
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“Our centres were pretty handy, Teddy (Wilson) the captain played well – there were a few guys that played well, but we have got to make sure we shift our focus to England now… the focus now shifts from Ireland, and we will take some good learnings from it.”
