'The easy option would have been to do something out of character'

Having squeezed in attendance at four of the six round one Junior World Championship on Saturday despite a 40-minute road trip separating Paarl from Stellenbosch, RugbyPass encountered a pile of head coaches with a smattering of very different post-game emotions. There was agony, there was ecstasy and there was also plenty of relief.

For instance, New Zealand boss Clark Laidlaw outlined his sense of reassurance after his team eventually turned up in the second half in Paarl to finesse a 5-19 half-time deficit into a 27-26 win over Wales. Then there was Junior Boks head coach Bafana Nhleko, whose team anxiously laboured in Stellenbosch against Georgia.

They lost a man to the second-half sin bin at a time when they were just two points up, but the sense of emergency that playing with just 14 players suddenly sparked a gallop that left them deserving 10-point winners.

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As the host nation, it was inevitable that their opener attracted the day’s biggest attendance, but it took them a while to get local fans to fully engage with their efforts judging by how beer, food and Mexican waves occupied their attention for long tracts before the night finally came alive in the closing quarter and South Africa pushed on to win 33-23.

Nhleko is a long-time servant at this age-grade level, assisting the Junior Boks since 2018 and then taking the head-coaching reins from Chean Roux in February 2021. Progress was shackled by the pandemic but having secured first place at last June’s six-team Summer Series in Italy, the ambition now is to win his country its first U20s World Cup since 2012, the last time South Africa staged the tournament.

The man in demand post-game in Stellenbosch, South Africa’s No10 Jean Smith #WorldRugbyU20s pic.twitter.com/jFFvYPgAXC

— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) June 24, 2023

With that pressure of hosting on them, round one was very much a story of victory before a performance for Nhleko, simply to get the show up and running. “We will take the win,” he told RugbyPass. “That is the first thing that you wish for and then you worry about the performances later, so very happy we got the win. Proud of the boys’ character, especially in the second half the way they held it together under immense, immense pressure.

“We spoke a lot about how game one was going to be how we gauge where we really are. We haven’t really had international rugby and we don’t know where we stand, so it was important for us to understand what Test rugby is about at this level and for the boys to get a good feeling of tournament rugby. It’s out of the way now. They have got a taste of it, but the big thing is how we grow from here.”

There were reasons for optimism despite the frayed nerves. “Some good character at face value the way they stemmed the tide. I’m not sure how many consecutive penalties were against us and just the way they found a way to get out of that and the decision-making out of that to just keep the scoreboard ticking – the easy option would have been to try and do something out of character.”

Italy are next up for South Africa in Paarl on Thursday and they are optimistic about building support for the team through to what they hope will be a July 14 final appearance at the 34,000-capacity Athlone Stadium on the outskirts of Cape Town.

“I am hoping (that will be the case), but the most important thing for us is how we perform and how we get certain things right in the field,” insisted Nhleko.

“It has been the message throughout to the boys, that they can’t worry about the support and people getting behind you. The only thing you can do is perform well and if you do the right things on the field, naturally people will get behind you.”

South Africa had quite a while to wait last Saturday, their game being the last of the day with a 7pm local time kick-off. It gave them ample opportunity to size up their potential rivals for the trophy and to also absorb the excitement of seeing the tournament swing back into action for the first time since 2019.

“We played the last game, so we got to watch a few of them. Argentina-Italy, watched them a little. Watched England-Ireland, that was quite a cracker of a game. Some of Australia-Fiji as well, there has been some amazing rugby throughout. It is going to be a tough comp.

“We know it [the Junior World Championship] is the bedrock of guys coming through, we have seen the last one was 2018, 2019 and most of those guys (that won the titles) are now playing for the French international team. It is an important part of the rugby landscape. It’s phenomenal.”