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Junior Boks end poor Championship run with seven-try win over Wales

Junior Boks' Sibabalwe Mahashe celebrates versus Wales in Cape Town (Photo by Carl Fourie/World Rugby)

The Junior Boks broke their three-game losing streak at the World Rugby U20 Championship, comfortably beating Wales 47-31 with a seven-try effort at the Cape Town Stadium in the seventh/eighth place play-off.

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Bafana Nhleko’s injury-hit side had lost twice to Argentina and England in their recent outings at a variety of venues following their opening night win over Fiji on June 29, but they took their frustration out on the Welsh, who came into the rankings decider having lost at the tournament to Australia, France and New Zealand.

A match day two win over Spain, who dramatically relegated Fiji with a sudden death try on Friday morning, was Wales’ only win at the Championship and hopes that they might extend South Africa’s misery got lost in a disappointing opening half-hour where they conceded three tries.

Skipper Zach Porthen got the hosts motoring on 10 minutes and other tries followed from Sibabalwe Mahashe and JF van Heerden to generate a 19-point gap that was reduced to 19-5 at the interval by Walker Price’s try.

Mahashe (46) and crowd favourite Bathobele Hlekani (56) then scored South African tries either side of one for Wales from Aidan Boschoff to make it 33-10.

The Welsh thought they might make things interesting with a Steffan Emanuel intercept try on 62 minutes, but the Junior Boks quickly responded with scores from Asad Moos (64) and Porthen’s second (68) to spin the lead out to 47-17.

Wales finished brightly, though, with a well-worked 73rd-minute try in the corner from the lively Price and a last-play 82nd-minute Owen Conquer score.

  • Click here to sign up to RugbyPass TV for free live coverage of matches from the 2024 World Rugby U20 Championship in countries that don’t have an exclusive local host broadcaster deal

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Flankly 1 hour ago
'Absolute madness': Clive Woodward rips into Borthwick in wake of NZ loss

Borthwick is supposed to be the archetypical conservative coach, the guy that might not deliver a sparkling, high-risk attacking style, but whose teams execute the basics flawlessly. And that's OK, because it can be really hard to beat teams that are rock solid and consistent in the rugby equivalent of "blocking and tackling".


But this is why the performance against NZ is hard to defend. You can forgive a conservative, back-to-basics team for failing to score tons of tries, because teams like that make up for it with reliability in the simple things. They can defend well, apply territorial pressure, win the set piece battles, and take their scoring chances with metronomic goal kicking, maul tries and pick-and-go goal line attacks.


The reason why the English rugby administrators should be on high alert is not that the English team looked unable to score tries, but that they were repeatedly unable to close out a game by executing basic, coachable skills. Regardless of how they got to the point of being in control of their destiny, they did get to that point. All that was needed was to be world class at things that require more training than talent. But that training was apparently missing, and the finger has to point at the coach.


Borthwick has been in the job for nearly two years, a period that includes two 6N programs and an RWC campaign. So where are the solid foundations that he has been building?

4 Go to comments
N
Nickers 1 hour ago
Scott Robertson responds to criticism over All Blacks' handling errors

Very poor understanding of what's going on and 0 ability to read. When I say playing behind the gain line you take this to mean all off-loads and site times we are playing in front of the gain line???


Every time we play a lot of rugby behind the gain line (for clarity, meaning trying to build an attack and use width without front foot ball 5m+ behind the most recent breakdown) we go backwards and turn the ball over in some way. Every time a player is tackled behind the most recent breakdown you need more and more people to clear out because your forwards have to go back around the corner, whereas opposition players can keep moving forward. Eventually you run out of either players to clear out or players to pass to and the result in a big net loss of territory and often a turnover. You may have witnessed that 20+ times in the game against England. This is a particularly dumb idea inside your own 40m which is where, for some reason, we are most likely to employ it.


The very best ABs teams never built an identity around attacking from poor positions. The DC era team was known for being the team that kicked the most. To engineer field position and apply pressure, and create broken play to counter attack. This current team is not differentiating between when a defence has lost it's structure and there are opportunities, and when they are completely set and there is nothing on. The reason they are going for 30 minute + periods in every game without scoring a single point, even against Japan and a poor Australian team, is because they are playing most of their rugby on the back foot in the wrong half.

43 Go to comments
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