England flew out of South Africa last Saturday evening to Heathrow as the rightful champions, the consistency of their potent scrum and manipulative defence helping them to a deserved first title since 2016.
They certainly enjoyed their first-ever campaign at the tournament and the excellent news for them is that they will compete in next year’s edition following the remarkable exploits of Yago Fernandez Vilar and co earlier in the day 15kms out the road in Athlone.
The Fijians ultimately paid a heavy price for card trouble, suffering three yellows and one red over the course of an exhausting 93 minutes of play.
It's semi-finals Sunday at the World Rugby U20 Championship and following last Tuesday’s weather-affected schedule, the hope will be that all six matches will be played to an 80-minute conclusion unlike on match day three when there were just four and a half matches completed due to the heavy rain making pitches unplayable.
Three matches are scheduled for Athlone: Ireland-Australia (2pm local time), France-Wales (4:30pm) and South Africa-England (7pm). Over in Stellenbosch, it’s Argentina-Fiji (2pm), Georgia-Italy (4:30pm) and New Zealand-Spain (7pm).
Three matches are scheduled for Stellenbosch: Ireland vs Georgia (kick-off 2pm local), France vs New Zealand (4:30pm) and South Africa vs Argentina (7pm). Over in Athlone, Wales vs Spain is the opening match (2pm) followed by England vs Fiji (4:30pm) and Australia vs Italy (7pm).
The Spanish have the honour of opening the pool the DHL Stadium this Saturday, taking on a French team that didn’t fire on all cylinders in a Six Nations campaign that only merited third place.