Leicester Tigers flanker Charlie Beckett says England used their 'get out of jail free' card to qualify for the semi-finals of the World Rugby U20s Championship.The Red Rose lost 30-18 to France in their final pool game, which saw the French book their place in the last four against New Zealand and left England’s title defence hanging by a thread
But results elsewhere meant that England, winners of the last two World Rugby U20s Championships, qualified as the best performing second-placed team. They will now face South Africa on Monday (7.30pm UK time) in a repeat of last year’s final.
“It was a very quiet changing room,” said Tigers back-rower Beckett, who made his first start of the competition. “We were all pretty gutted and then it was a very tense couple of hours waiting on the South Africa and New Zealand results.
“It was horrible not having it in our hands anymore because if we had won we’d be going through whatever. Come the final whistle of the two games it was more a sense of relief, that we’d had our get out of jail free card.
“We’ve said that at every World Cup pretty much any team that wins it have one game when they don’t play well. Ours has to be yesterday.
“We can’t afford another performance like that because now it is knock-out rugby. It was a sense of ok that’s our one that we’re allowed for the tournament, learn from it, move on and be ready to go come Monday,” Beckett told the England Rugby podcast.
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That was our one poor game - Beckett
11 June 2015 3:49 PM
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That was our one poor game - Beckett
11 June 2015 2:49 PM
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