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'You shouldn’t really judge a whole programme on one particular game'
It has a lovely ring to it – World Rugby U20 Championship and U20 Six Nations double champions. It has happened just once before, France collecting the lot in 2018. Now England are on the cusp of replicating this rare feat and Mark Mapletoft has every confidence that his class of 2024 can deliver in Cape Town.
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If the double doesn’t materialise, though, he doesn’t want people judging the RFU’s pathway programme based on a single result in South Africa versus an opposition gunning to collect its fourth U20 Championship title in a row.
“Whatever happens on Friday you shouldn’t really judge a whole programme on one particularly game,” said Mapletoft when asked by RugbyPass what message would England winning send out.
“I have gone on record saying this a number of times recently, the men’s pathway staff have worked incredibly hard over the last three to four years post covid to really try and get it back to a starting point where we feel we can start to be competitive in regular fixtures and in competitions against the best teams in the world.
“We are starting to get somewhere near where we need to be, so I certainly wouldn’t personally judge a programme on one result. But what it shows this year is that we are able to compete with teams that have dominated Six Nations, Junior World Cups over the last four to five years and that being France and Ireland, showing that we can compete regularly with them.
“That is what we want to be doing, and then using that as a springboard to being a team like France who are able to be successful on a regular basis.”
England strangled Ireland 31-20, keeping them scoreless in the second half with a sumptuous show of physical power from their forwards, while beating France at U20s level isn’t alien to them either as it was just 18 weeks ago that Mapletoft’s kids went to Pau and nabbed the 45-31 win that crowned them Six Nations champions. For sure, they are on song.
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“The (no) fear thing isn’t around disrespecting any team we play. If you go in with a mindset that you’re fearful then you’re not intent to go out there and put out on to the pitch what you’re about,” he explained.
“We have said many times we respect absolutely everybody we play. We don’t get many goes in this space. We have 10 competitive fixtures a year. We are very fortunate to have had five other games be it Six Nations warm-up matches against Bath and Oxford Uni, into Georgia for a couple of games, we played Coventry – they are games where we are able to go out and try things and look at different ways of doing things.
“But ultimately when you come to the 10 Test matches you have to be supremely confident about what you are trying to deliver. We respect every team we play, we respect France hugely. They handed it to us hugely in the sort of last 20 minutes last year (in the Championship semi-final) and that was a really good learning point for us as a group.
“There are a few players left over from that, a lot of staff and that has given us a huge amount of motivation. But yeah, it’s making sure we get that balance right between respecting who we are playing and not being arrogant but being confident that we can go out and deliver what we can deliver.”
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As ever, the five-day turnaround between matches has been relentless and it is always the case that teams do less on the training ground over the last two rounds as they are the most important games and it is a challenge to ensure all players are at their freshest and firing. England have been no different.
“Like all teams you taper off, that is what you plan for before you come out here. You know that so you are able to get a little more load before you come in and then between rounds one and two and two and three you can load up a little bit more because you are forced to change your side a little bit.
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“When you get to rounds three, four and five, if you are fortunate to get to the final you are probably fielding the strongest team you can so then that accumulative load starts to build up so you to cut back and we would have done exactly the same, not necessarily spent more time on analysis of either ourselves or the opposition because you have also got cognitive load as well.
“It’s all well and good saying we are backing off physically but mentally we have been away – I was just saying to Finn (Carnduff, the England captain) beforehand this tournament really took me by surprise last year. I hadn’t been away on tour for four weeks, a long, long time if ever.
“But when you get past the second-and-a-half, third week they are actually your biggest games so you have to be mindful of not only the physical load but the cognitive load as well. We are very deliberate with what we do with the lads through the course of the day and so far it has been paying dividends for us.”
England held their pre-final media briefing before their team for the Cape Town Stadium was confirmed on Wednesday evening, so chat about an XV showing two changes from the semi-final – Kane Douglas for Nathan Michelow at No8 and Ben Waghorn for Angus Hall at outside centre – wasn’t possible.
What was possible was a summation of having Takehito Namekawa of Japan referee the final against the French. His refereeing appointments at the tournament were Wales-New Zealand, South Africa-Argentina and Georgia-Italy during the pool stages while he wasn’t on the whistle on match day four, so he has no Championship experience of either side although he was in charge when the French hammered Wales in Cardiff 19 weeks ago in the Six Nations.
Do referees at U20s level attract the same level of analysis from teams as happens at Test level? “I’d be lying if I said we don’t analyse him but I’d be telling the truth if I said we don’t pay too much attention to it as in they have been out there for two or three games, you probably don’t really get many trends.
“If there is something that they are hot on we will mention it to the players that that might impact on the most if that makes sense,” said Mapletoft.
“We do pull out information, that would definitely be telling the truth but no, you simply just wouldn’t have enough data. If you were being refereed by Wayne Barnes you would have a whole back catalogue of what he does and what he prefers to do but with referees at this level, it is just a very broad brush and good practice for the players.
“But again, we would only really pass on information to key players or we might make a reference to an area of the game that the referee might be hot on.”
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France’s team this year doesn’t seem to be as dominant as last years’s. The 2023 success made it harder for the 2024 team to perform: lots of the guys from 2004 who won it last year were called upon for the tour in Argentina or got rest after injuries or a long season.
Just as Gailleton and Bielle-Biarrey didn’t compete in the 2023 U20 WC. Now it’s Tuilagi, Gazzotti, Attissogbé, Darricarrère, Tuifau… But maybe England and Ireland also had players that could compete in that U20 WC but were taken on tour…?
And I would also temper a bit the last 6 Nations where France U20 often put a B/C team because many of the players were engaged in Top14 to replace the players missing because they were playing for the senior 6 Nations. Especially the game against England in Pau where they had 3 days of preparation with players taken at the last minute. And when you see how strong this England U20 side is, that was complicated.