The England Under-20s lifted the Junior World Championship title for the first time on Sunday, with three Leicester Tigers in their squad.
Back in ’03 Martin Johnson, Neil Back, Lewis Moody, Martin Corry, Julian White, Ben Kay, Dorian West and Clive Woodward sat on top of the world. It was the best of times for English rugby, a star was born in Jonny Wilkinson and the whole squad became household names with MBEs for good measure.
Victory in the Junior World Championships will not have that kind of impact, but it would be a crime if it was lost entirely in the hype a Lions summer.
England’s rugby academies often seem to be criticised for concentrating on theory rather than matchplay and for breeding young men more at home in the gym than the rugby pitch.
The Under-18 League, in which Tigers enjoyed success last season, will help to bridge that gap between training and playing competitively, while The Tig believes the same people who point at this supposed gym obsession will also compliment other nations’ players on their physicality.
Let’s not kid around here, this is a high-impact sport and only the strongest survive. To think otherwise is to compliment a boxer for his ringcraft when he has a glass chin or toast the cricket team with the ability to bowl out opponents cheaply but not score a run of their own.
England’s Under-20s were certainly physical as they withstood New Zealand in the semi-final, picking themselves up to make tackle after tackle and trusting each other in defence. There is nothing wrong in that. They also had to get far enough up the field in attack to create and convert their chances or put pressure on to gain penalties, and they did both, scoring three tries into the bargain.
In the Final, England were 15-3 down to Wales at half-time and suffered the potentially demoralising moment before the interval when they had a try disallowed – from Leicester’s Tom Price –and lost a man to the sin-bin for foul play detected by the referee and confirmed by TMO.
The team showed great resolve to come back and they built momentum through the second half which kept Wales on the back foot.
This was England’s fourth World Juniors Final and a first victory. They beat the Baby Blacks for the first time in this age-group to get there. It takes a lot more than gym monkeys to get there.
