Junior Boks hurting but will play for pride

The Junior Springboks are hurting after losing to Argentina on Sunday and will give it their all to bounce back in the final match of their World Rugby U20 Championship campaign when they contest seventh place on Friday.

The SA U20s lost 34-24 (half-time 10-24) to Argentina in their fifth-place semi-final on a sunny but cool afternoon in Cape Town on Sunday and gave a much better account of themselves than in the pool fixture 10 days ago, when the Pumitas won comfortably.

The Junior Boks showed great showed greater enterprise on attack, with the drier conditions obviously helping their cause, but this was nullified by Argentina’s stronger performance in the lineouts.

Argentina again started better and took a 14-point lead into the break, but the Junior Boks made a big step up in the second half, with especially Jurenzo Julius testing the defence with his strong running in midfield. Argentina, though, kept the upper hand to the game to another positive result for them.

Afterwards, Junior Bok coach Bafana Nhleko said his side’s tendency to drop the intensity at important moments of the match spoiled several good opportunities.

“There were lots of pressure release today,” said Nhleko.

“We would play in moments and get good momentum, then we release the pressure with an error or poor decision making and then we would find ourselves on the backfoot again.

“We started well in the lineouts, and when they started to get tired, we fell off with our detail to keep the pressure on them.

“Those are the opportunities that we lost, and those moments really hurt us. Today, the most disappointing thing was around the defence, which is usually our strong point.”

Nhleko summed up the mood in the camp: “Obviously we’re down in terms of how we feel because the result wasn’t what we had hoped for. The reality is that we must get up and go again because we have a game again on Friday.”

In terms of finishing the tournament, against either Wales or Australia, Nhleko said: “We know people are hurting, and the team hurt as much. The performance was good in parts but not good enough for the full 80 minutes, but we have one more to go, and we must bounce back and hopefully finish on a better note. Now we must play for some pride.”

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