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'He’s lying, it’s all Asher!': England U20s' Cape Town title party

England U20s No1 Asher Opoku-Fordjour celebrates his team's world final win over France (Photo by Nic Bothma/World Rugby)

Cape Town Stadium was quite the post-game battlefield on Friday night. Turn right in the corridor facing out towards the field and you encountered the sombre French, distraught that their hopes of winning a fourth World Rugby U20 Championship title in a row has crashed and burned on a South African mid-winter’s night under a full moon.

Step left, though, and the contrast couldn’t have been starker. Wild celebrations were unfolding, commemorating the first age-grade England world title in eight years.

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Mark Mapletoft’s side were immense in putting manners on a French side who needed a last-second converted consolation to massage the scoreboard to 21-13 and make it look that the second-half pasting that they had suffered wasn’t as terrible as it looked.

Forget the mannerly mezzanine post-game set-up, where there was an African band playing in the middle of drinks stands located on either side of the tunnel corridors. Party central was inside was the England dressing room.

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HITS, BUMPS AND HANDOFFS! | The biggest collisions from the 2023 U20s World Championships

A showcase of the most ferocious collisions from the 2023 U20s World Championships all in one place!

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HITS, BUMPS AND HANDOFFS! | The biggest collisions from the 2023 U20s World Championships

A showcase of the most ferocious collisions from the 2023 U20s World Championships all in one place!

When two of their mainstays poked their heads around the corner to give RugbyPass a sense of the jubilation unfolding in their inner sanctum, the giddy feelings of the overjoyed Henry Pollock and Asher Opoku-Fordjour were obvious.

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Beaming with Hollywood smiles and with polished medals dangling around their necks, here is what the pair briefly managed to say before retreating and getting stuck back into the messiness and madness of being well-deserved age-grade world champions:

RugbyPass: Fantastic performance. Well done. Congratulations. What does being a world champion mean to you?

Pollock: Honestly, we are so proud of the boys. What an effort that is, an 80-minute performance against a really strong France side. We’ve done it, eh! Champions of the world!! Let’s GO!!!

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RugbyPass: What was the difference?

Pollock: Our scrum. Asher’s here. Our scrum was incredible as always. Yeah, over to Asher.

Opoku-Fordjour: Scrums win games!

Pollock: Salads don’t!

Pollock: But listen, great effort, we’re really proud of the boys are we are going to celebrate tonight. Shout out to France, what a good outfit but at the end of the day we are the champions of the world. So, you can’t argue with that, can you?!

RugbyPass: Yellow card swing it?

Opoku-Fordjour: No, we were always…

RugbyPass: What we mean is you scored a lot of important points in that period.

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Pollock: We definitely capitalised on that yellow card. But look, the work of the forwards was outstanding and then we had the backs to pull all the strings on the outside and we got the points we needed. Look, a full squad effort. No individuals in this team. It’s a brotherhood and we are so happy.

RugbyPass: How fabulous is it to win to ensure that this brotherhood really is the thing?

Pollock: Honestly, it’s one of the best feelings in the world. To be able to do it out here in South Africa with such a good group of boys and such a good coaching staff is amazing. Yeah, look, we are going to celebrate hard tonight and why not? We are champions of the world!

Opoku-Fordjour: Do you want a beer?

RugbyPass: I’m grand.

Opoku-Fordjour: Naughty boy!

RugbyPass: Nathan Catt has just been singing the praises of the scrum. You have been phenomenal the last couple of games.

Opoku-Fordjour: Thank you!

RugbyPass: Talk us through what is it like, that feeling of scrum dominance and making it count?  

Opoku-Fordjour: Loads of people think it’s the front row but it’s all eight.

Pollock: He’s lying, it’s all Asher!

Opoku-Fordjour: It’s all eight of us. We all have to push for that scrum to move forward and for it to work. It’s all eight of us.

RugbyPass: First person you contacted as a world champion?

Opoku-Fordjour: Well, I’ve no wi-fi in this building right now.

Pollock: He’s lying. First person he contacted was his girlfriend (huge laughter).

Opoku-Fordjour: Nah, my dad’s here. My agent’s here. So I went over to speak to them.

Pollock: Honestly, my family are out here and it was very special to have them out here and look, we are going to celebrate hard tonight and you never know, you might see them out there as well.

Opoku-Fordjour: Are you sure you don’t want a beer?

RugbyPass: In a second, don’t worry. We’ll have one. Final question, this is not just a Championship, it’s a double with the Six Nations title. Fantastic year overall?

Pollock: Honestly, look, it’s not just the squad that we had today. We had a 40-man squad at the start of this year out in Portugal and that’s what the work is for, the icing on the top. That’s the cherry in the top and we’re loving life. Champions of the world, eh? Let’s go…!!

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J
JW 3 hours ago
'Passionate reunion of France and New Zealand shows Fabien Galthie is wrong to rest his stars'

Ok, managed to read the full article..

... New Zealand’s has only 14 and the professional season is all over within four months. In France, club governance is the responsibility of an independent organisation [the Ligue Nationale de Rugby or LNR] which is entirely separate from the host union [the Fédération Française de Rugby or FFR]. Down south New Zealand Rugby runs the provincial and the national game.

That is the National Provincial Championship, a competition of 14 representative union based teams run through the SH international window and only semi professional (paid only during it's running). It is run by NZR and goes for two and a half months.


Super Rugby is a competition involving 12 fully professional teams, of which 5 are of New Zealand eligibility, and another joint administered team of Pacific Island eligibility, with NZR involvement. It was a 18 week competition this year, so involved (randomly chosen I believe) extra return fixtures (2 or 3 home and away derbys), and is run by Super Rugby Pacific's own independent Board (or organisation). The teams may or may not be independently run and owned (note, this does not necessarily mean what you think of as 'privately owned').


LNR was setup by FFR and the French Government to administer the professional game in France. In New Zealand, the Players Association and Super Rugby franchises agreed last month to not setup their own governance structure for professional rugby and re-aligned themselves with New Zealand Rugby. They had been proposing to do something like the English model, I'm not sure how closely that would have been aligned to the French system but it did not sound like it would have French union executive representation on it like the LNR does.

In the shaky isles the professional pyramid tapers to a point with the almighty All Blacks. In France the feeling for country is no more important than the sense of fierce local identity spawned at myriad clubs concentrated in the southwest. Progress is achieved by a nonchalant shrug and the wide sweep of nuanced negotiation, rather than driven from the top by a single intense focus.

Yes, it is pretty much a 'representative' selection system at every level, but these union's are having to fight for their existence against the regime that is NZR, and are currently going through their own battle, just as France has recently as I understand it. A single focus, ala the French game, might not be the best outcome for rugby as a whole.


For pure theatre, it is a wonderful article so far. I prefer 'Ntamack New Zealand 2022' though.

The young Crusader still struggles to solve the puzzle posed by the shorter, more compact tight-heads at this level but he had no problem at all with Colombe.

It was interesting to listen to Manny during an interview on Maul or Nothing, he citied that after a bit of banter with the All Black's he no longer wanted one of their jersey's after the game. One of those talks was an eye to eye chat with Tamaiti Williams, there appear to be nothing between the lock and prop, just a lot of give and take. I thought TW angled in and caused Taylor to pop a few times, and that NZ were lucky to be rewarded.

f you have a forward of 6ft 8ins and 145kg, and he is not at all disturbed by a dysfunctional set-piece, you are in business.

He talked about the clarity of the leadership that helped alleviate any need for anxiety at the predicaments unfolding before him. The same cannot be said for New Zealand when they had 5 minutes left to retrieve a match winning penalty, I don't believe. Did the team in black have much of a plan at any point in the game? I don't really call an autonomous 10 vehicle they had as innovative. I think Razor needs to go back to the dealer and get a new game driver on that one.

Vaa’i is no match for his power on the ground. Even in reverse, Meafou is like a tractor motoring backwards in low gear, trampling all in its path.

Vaa'i actually stops him in his tracks. He gets what could have been a dubious 'tackle' on him?

A high-level offence will often try to identify and exploit big forwards who can be slower to reload, and therefore vulnerable to two quick plays run at them consecutively.

Yes he was just standing on his haunches wasn't he? He mentioned that in the interview, saying that not only did you just get up and back into the line to find the opposition was already set and running at you they also hit harder than anything he'd experienced in the Top 14. He was referring to New Zealands ultra-physical, burst-based Super style of course, which he was more than a bit surprised about. I don't blame him for being caught out.


He still sent the obstruction back to the repair yard though!

What wouldn’t the New Zealand rugby public give to see the likes of Mauvaka and Meafou up front..

Common now Nick, don't go there! Meafou showed his Toulouse shirt and promptly got his citizenship, New Zealand can't have him, surely?!?


As I have said before with these subjects, really enjoy your enthusiasm for their contribution on the field and I'd love to see more of their shapes running out for Vern Cotter and the like styled teams.

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