WR U20 Championship 2025
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@Bovidae from a couple of articles I’ve read, Bok u20 head coach Kevin Foote said that they had talked quite a bit with Rassie and his team, especially Jerry Flannery who is the Boks defence coach.
“ We’ve had lots of input from the [Boks] defensive coach [Jerry Flannery] and their medical team and have been very well supported, which we are grateful for.”
I believe Galthie has been working similarly with the French u20s over the last few years.
How much interaction does the NZ u20 coaching team have with the All Blacks coaches I wonder? Is NZ rugby missing a trick again?
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@Bovidae scrum was a gimme penalty for the Boks for most of the game. You can’t win if you can’t maintain pressure and force your opponent to crack.
When NZ did apply sustained pressure the Boks defence was out of this world (that defensive set in the 1st half was huge), but they looked human. They just didn’t do it enough to tire the Boks out.
Pead will be a Springbok in the next 2 years.
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@Bovidae That 10 minute period after half time where we battered their line but came away with nothing really cost us. Outstanding bok defence
I thought our scrum was ok but once Pole went off the scrum went badly
Never like to criticise these young guys too much but replacement tight head Dane Johnson seemed like a penalty magnet all tournament. I believe he's eligible next year so he will need to bulk up a bit. Hopefully this will be a good learning curve -
@Kiwidom Johnston, like McLeod and Wiseman, are in their first year out of school. I commented when the original squad was named how surprised I was that Johnston was selected given he was only the reserve TH prop for the Chiefs U20s. It's pretty hard for a prop to pack against someone who could be 2 years older. Faleafā also had his issues on the TH side.
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It looks like everything is back to normal so what better way to confirm this than to post an overly long write-up of the U20 final.
So anyway. Well done to the Junior Boks, deserved winners both in this game and in the overall tournament. The NZ U20s should also be pleased with their overall year, I think: they showed plenty of signs of better preparation, solid coaching, and good team culture. While they took over most of last year’s game plan, it was noticeable that they were thoroughly developing it: the running lines were tighter, the midfield pairing worked as a real collective, and the kicking tactics were on point.
As far as the final itself is concerned, I think the Baby Blacks played well, but they were always chasing the game after ‘losing’ the first quarter and the subsequent momentum through the game. First, they couldn’t defend the Junior Bok rolling maul. And secondly, they couldn’t finish their own chances as efficiently as they did in the U20 TRC. Part of this was of course the Junior Bok defence. But the other part is the NZ U20s simply not choosing the right option.
In their first ‘real’ attack of the game, the NZ U20s manipulated the Junior Bok defence well, condensing their defensive line through forward carries before going wide. A quick Roberts carry and recycle gives Simpson the ball in his hands and a two man overlap on his right.
These opportunities become extra important in a final, as they are sparse and shape the game's momentumVaenuku is running at Williams outside shoulder so is in a good position to finish on top of him. Another option would be the over the top-pop to Solomon, who is unmarked. Instead, Simpson goes himself, being stopped short, before Solomon is forced out in the next phase.
While the Baby Blacks would score soon after, not scoring in these kinds of situations drains an attack’s confidence while boosting the momentum of the defence. If the defence feels it can stop you in multi-phase, then it becomes much harder to get on top of them the more the game goes on.
While Rico Simpson has developed really well as a first five this year (his mature showing in the semi-final further proof of that), there’s still things he needs to improve on: (1) when to stay in structure and when to play what you see and (2) how to manage your attack when things are going different than expected.
In a first example, the NZ U20s have an attacking scrum around the halfway line (38th minute), with Simpson calling one of those typical looping plays, Vaenuku tracking the play as a second trail runner behind Simpson. The idea is to create a line-break, with either Vaenuku going through or the latter putting Kunawave away. But the scrum is messy and the passing is poor, so when the ball reaches Simpson at the South African defensive seam, Vaenuku isn’t right on Simpson’s shoulder. Furthermore, Bester, the South African 12, is in the bin, which means they’re defending with fewer players in the line.
Wait, the space is not a lie?So when Simpson gets the ball, he needs to break structure and simply move the ball into space to Kunawave, rather than going for the planned move. But he throws it out the back to Vaenuku who is easily tackled by Jooste and the play breaks down.
The second aspect has to do with the SA U20 defence itself. The Junior Boks didn’t rush as much as they did in the U20 TRC – focusing instead on containing the NZ U20 wide attack by pushing out in numbers – and this meant that those looping plays out the back didn’t work as effectively as they did in the U20 Rugby Championship. But this also provides opportunity for the attack, as this means that there is more space close to the ruck and in the middle of the field.
With the game nearly over, Stanley Solomon, Will Cole and Maloni Kunawave show what happens when you cut back against the grain and attack through the middle, targeting the seams between forwards as well as the space around the ruck. There are a lot of tired Junior Bok forwards in that space, who are vulnerable for these kinds of moves.
Again, all too little, too late. Just to be clear, this is, by no means, meant as a criticism to the team nor to Simpson. I thought they played outstandingly this year, and put in some massive performances. Simpson is going to be an excellent player and he’ll learn a lot from this. In this final, they played really hard and it was clear that they gave it their all.
The most positive thing is that the NZ U20 set-up is finally showing signs of having their own clear identity, as well as coaches who are able to improve these systems. It will be up to next year’s crop and the new first fives to further sharpen their attack, and go one step further at the U20 World Championships in Georgia.
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The fact that both France and New Zealand lost their matches is not a coincidence. Their semifinal was physically very demanding. France had beaten Argentina by a cricket score and went to lose for the third place against the same team which they had crushed ten days before. The ABs U20 looked cooked in the final, as soon as the first cooling break. Losing Pole was a big handicap too.
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@Joan-and-Mary Doing well. Good to see you are still around. The good old days. We need to team up in KP tipping.
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SA had a special squad u20s in this tournament. All of them will play CC which starts now and most will play URC this year. The Stormers used Fuller and JC Mars already who was injured and not playing in this tournament.
Good news is that I expect next year's Bokkies to be even better and the current SA Schools team have rugby freaks like Markus Muller, Siyaya and Jordan Jooste. Rugby is on the up in South Africa, on and off the field.
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@OomPB said in WR U20 Championship 2025:
SA had a special squad u20s in this tournament. All of them will play CC which starts now and most will play URC this year. The Stormers used Fuller and JC Mars already who was injured and not playing in this tournament.
Good news is that I expect next year's Bokkies to be even better and the current SA Schools team have rugby freaks like Markus Muller, Siyaya and Jordan Jooste. Rugby is on the up in South Africa, on and off the field.
I think the biggest change for the Junior Boks was that SA Rugby and Erasmus (1) addressed some of their biggest weaknesses of previous years (lack of attacking tactics and variation) while (2) massively upping their levels of preparation.
The latter especially seems to have brought a lot of cohesion and confidence to the group. This year alone they had (1) multiple development camps, (2) a 2-game tour to Georgia, (3) prep games against senior club and national teams, and (4) the U20 Rugby Championship.
So while there are undoubtedly some special talents among this group (Hlekani, Mnebelele, Norton, Pead, Mentoe), I don’t think they were necessarily more talented than the cohorts in 2014 (Marx, Esterhuizen, J. Kriel, Pollard, W. Louw, T. du Toit), or 2017 (Willemse, Libbok, Augustus, Steenekamp, Grobbelaar, Moerat). SA Rugby thoroughly invested in the side and provided them with good coaches, so it’s good to see that those investments and good decisions properly paid off as well.
I think the same is true for the NZ U20s, by the way. The team looked much more tactically astute while having more thorough levels of investment and preparation than in previous years. I used the following graph in another post – but I don’t think a lot of people read it so I’ll just use it again – which I think does show that age grade success does not so much anticipate senior success as it does coincide with it.
Winning percentages of NZ U19, U21, U20 and All Blacks between 1995 and 2024So good results at age grade level are more a sign of a well-governed rugby union than they are necessarily signs of the level of rugby talent within the country. France is another good example of this: both their senior and age grade sides started to get better, at the same time, because the administrators started making better decisions (JIFF, coaching selections, developing central rugby identity). But in terms of talent flow from the French U20 winning seasons (2018, ’19, ’23), there’s not a lot of immediate impact on the national team. All of the central, experienced players in the current French squad - Dupont, Lucu, Ramos, Fickou, Penaud, Atonio, Mauvaka, Aldritt, Marchand, Jelonch, Cros, Baille - never won an U20 title.
That said, the U20 win is great news for SA Rugby but more in the sense that the rugby administration is finally getting some things right after underperforming for a long time. I think that's the true value of people like Erasmus and Danie Craven before him: they lift the level of rugby throughout the country, across all levels.
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Myself love schoolboy rugby. It explode in South Africa since Covid. SuperSchools make it possible to view live school sport all over the country. DStv stream two live matches on Saturdays on channel 216. This make school rugby a total new ball game with sponsors and investment.
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After a terrible performance in their first game, the Baby Blacks improved a lot as the tournament went on. They were always two or three big forwards light to defeat a team like the South African one. But the Under 20s are progressing, especially in terms of their organisation, temperament and game management and a number of the players are young enough to go again next year.
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The RugbyPass team of the World Rugby U20 Championship
Seven champion Junior Boks and one ferocious Georgian are selected in RugbyPass' pick of the ultimate talent in the age-grade game.
RugbyPass put together a team of the tournament with, unsurprisingly, a considerable number of Junior Boks (6: Mnebelele, Norton, Pead, Moyo, Williams and Jooste). There were also two NZ U20 players chosen: Wiseman at inside centre and Vakasiuola at lock.
It’s good to see Wiseman recognized for his efforts, as I thought he had a great tournament. He’s a smart player who typically makes those around him better. He’s also still eligible for next year’s U20 campaign. With a bit more muscle to his frame, he could be really effective in his style of play, I think.
Vakasiuola, I thought, was a bit out of left field as a selection for team of the tournament, especially as he only started the one game (Georgia, Rd. 2) and played only a total of 160 minutes across the tournament. He did well in his time on the field but still, a bit of a strange one. The writer (Jamie Lyall) didn’t seem to want to pick two lighter locks – with Riley Norton already at 4 – but I think Xavier Treacy definitely deserved more than a mention for all of his efforts throughout the tournament. Jayden Sa was also immense in the knock-out games against France and South Africa.
Vaenuku was perhaps a bit unlucky not to be selected at 14 but Cheswill Jooste was also really good throughout the tournament. Letiu had, quietly, a great World Cup as well. He's not as noticeable as someone like Oudenryn but if you see where he pops up on the field, it shows that Letiu has an incredible work rate. The biggest compliment I can give him is that he reminded me of Codie Taylor, just everywhere on the field.
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@sparky said in WR U20 Championship 2025:
Congratulations to the Baby Boks. A special squad with some excellent players. The Half Back looks ready to play Test Rugby already.
Rassie has picked 3 of the U20 youngsters to attend the next 2-week Springbok training camp coming up in JHB.
It's only to familiarize themselves with the Bok coaching set up - and I guess for the coaches to start early guidance, but still impressive for those 3 lads.
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Journey starting with international series for next year
SA U18 squads named for International Series
Junior Springbok head coach Kevin Foote will get a glimpse of what the future holds when he and his coaching team work with the two SA Under-18 squads announced on Wednesday for next month’s U18 International Series in and around Paarl, in the Western Cape.
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Looking ahead to next year (and why an NZ U18 side would be a real benefit to the NZ U20s too)
With the 2025 U20 campaign over, I was thinking about how next year’s U20 team could shape up and where its potential strengths and weaknesses would be. But as I put together a (very much preliminary) potential 23, it did become more clear to me why NZR would’ve wanted to put an NZ U18 team in place in its pathways, especially when comparing it to a potential Junior Wallaby side for next year. While NZR eventually caved to the schools’ demand to retain NZ Schools as the primary age grade team at U18 level, for 2025 at least – see: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/sport/561272/nz-rugby-drop-plan-to-establish-under-18-team – I’m not sure the current structure serves the pathway particularly well.
If cohesion is a real thing – I’m not quite as convinced of Ben Darwin’s arguments as some others but still – then it’s easy to see how Rugby Australia and the Junior Wallabies are trying to create a performance-edge by optimizing and narrowing their pathways.
There’s quite a bit of overlap for players – e.g. Raharuhi Palmer playing for both NZ U18 Barbarians and Māori U18 in 2024, Angus Grover playing for both AU U18 and AU U18 Sevens – but the idea is more to display different levels of variation and cohesion rather than predictive accuracy per se.While the NZ U20s are potentially drawing from 6 different national rep environments – NZ Schools, NZ U18 Barbarians, Māori U18, plus 7s teams such as NZ U18 Sevens, New Edition and NZ Cavaliers from the 2024 Global Youth Sevens – the Australians have tried to significantly streamline their pathways. The concept seems pretty clear: identify players as soon as possible and get them playing together, so they can develop their shared understanding of each other’s playing styles and habits.
Furthermore, there seems to be a logic to these two AU pathways as well, the forwards playing together for the AU U18s while the backs also spend considerable time together at the AU U18 Sevens team. It is worth noting that the AU U18 Sevens squad dominated the Global Youth Sevens in 2024, where they looked very well coached and tactically prepared.
Players across the Ta$man also look to have clear predecessors in their pathway. A player like Wallace Charlie, the MVP of the Global Youth Sevens, looks destined to follow in the footsteps of the 2025 Junior Wallaby standout, Sid Harvey, the latter also excelling at the Global Youth Sevens before going into AU 7s, and eventually returning to the XVs game at U20 level. Charlie has followed Sid Harvey’s path into AU 7s, making his debut at this year’s LA SVNS tournament. He’ll hope to recreate Harvey’s impact at U20 level as well.
A triple threat: 2024 Global Youth Sevens tournament MVP, Wallace Charlie (number 10 with the scrumcap), displaying his ability to kick, distribute and carry in last year's final against New Edition.
As far as next year’s NZ U20s are concerned, their pathways seem much more chaotic and muddled. One way they’ve been trying to circumvent this chaos, is by using the NZ U18 Barbarians (instead of NZ Schools) as a real development team, with many of the 2024 Barbarian backline already involved with the 2025 NZ U20s (Wiseman, Lewai, Muliaina). As the 2024 NZ U18 Barbarians used a similar attack shape to the 2025 NZ U20s (one would expect that this was by design), these players were already familiar with some of the attaching structures and requirements at the next level.
The typical L-shape attack we’ve seen with the NZ U20s, with a combined horizontal and vertical line of runners/pass targets in motion, already in play with the 2024 NZ U18 Barbarians, run by Mika Muliaina against Samoa U18sWith no centralized U18 high performance team, combinations will need to be found at other places. The loose forwards will most likely be more than familiar with each other, as the primary candidates will have already played a lot together this year for the NZ U20s – McLeod, Woodley, Fale. Then again, you’d wonder how much smoother and effective this loose forward trio could’ve been, if they’d already formed a combination at U18 level. The tight five, on the other hand, will largely have to start from scratch, although selectors might look for combinations at SR U20-level such as Leota, Tatafu and Brown who are all in the Blues pathways together.
Of course, I’m not saying that this is how things will pan out, especially in terms of personnel that is concerned. There are always injuries as well as players putting their hands up in SR U20 (U19 for AU) or club rugby. These teams could look completely different when 2026 comes around. But, for argument’s sake, when looking at the two rosters above from a cohesion-perspective, you’d understand why NZR would want a NZ U18 team.
As NZ age grade sides are leaning more and more into tactical innovation and complexity, players will need time to learn patterns and systems, as well as each other's habits and playing styles. Having an NZ U18 team would allow for this, while also creating a player culture which can be replicated at U20 level. In this sense, it seems only a matter of time before the NZ Schools team will eventually have to make way for an NZ U18 team which can combine players from First XV and club rugby.
