U20 World Championship: Teams up for Ireland v Scotland

The teams are up for the World Rugby U20 Championship 9th Place Semi Final between Ireland U20 and Scotland U20 which takes place in Perpignan on Tuesday afternoon. Kick off 4:00 pm local, 3:00 pm UK/IRE.

As expected, it’s been a difficult tournament for the Irish team who were drawn in a tough group. However they will be disappointed that they failed to pick up a win in the pool stages and they will be keen to make a statement, and secure qualification for next season’s tournament, over the next two games.

They face familiar foes in Scotland U20 and the nature of their win against the Scots in the Six Nations fourth round match shows that they can’t take a win for granted. They have continued to show defensive lapses in this tournament and they still need to produce a full 80 minute performance. My own general feeling is that there is a really good team in there waiting to burst out but they just seem unable to find the way.

The coaching ticket have looked to the backs to ring the changes with James Hume and Tommy O’Brien moving from the centre to the wings with Sean O’Brien and Peter Sylvester moving from the wings to the centre. Harry Byrne comes in at out half and Michael Silvester returns to full back after missing the last game with a knock.

Up front, Joe Byrne comes in for Aungier and Joe Dunleavy and Matthew Agnew return to the starting line up giving Ulster four players in the starting XV with Matthew Dalton retaining his starting spot in second row.

Johnny Stewart takes the squad total to five but the management team have perhaps missed a trick by leaving the recently arrived Michael Lowry out of the selection, the highly rate Ulster out half perhaps being just the man to break down defences late in the game.

The FRU Predicts: Ireland have plenty in attack and it should be enough to bag a high scoring win against a rebuilding Scotland.