The Junior Springboks are through to another Junior World Championship final after outlasting England 53-37 in a brutal semi-final slugfest at Avchala Stadium in Tbilisi on Monday.
It was not a comfortable afternoon. England came out of the blocks fastest, tighthead Ollie Streeter crashing over inside three minutes and flyhalf Hugh Shields adding the extras. The defending champions hit back through Yaqeen Ahmed, but two Shields penalties and a well-worked try kept England ahead deep into the contest.
This was the two sides’ fourth meeting in as many editions of the tournament, and it showed. Neither side gave an inch early, with England’s physical pack and disciplined kicking game matching the Junior Springboks phase for phase.
Then the floodgates opened. Between the 41st and 58th minutes, the Junior Springboks scored five tries without reply. Khuthadzo Rasivhaga bookended the burst with a brace either side of a double from flanker Kebotile Maake, before Luke Cannon added a fifth to turn a tight contest into a rout.
It was not one player’s doing. The forwards won the collisions that created the front-foot ball, the halfbacks found the width, and the finishers in the backline did the rest. That is how this Junior Springboks squad has played all tournament, and Monday was no different.
JAY | JPS SAYS: “This wasn’t one man winning a rugby match. This was a team that trusts every player around them to do their job, and when that trust pays off like it did in that second-half spell, no side in the world is stopping them.”
Ahmed’s boot did the tidying up, with two late penalties putting daylight on the scoreboard just as England threatened another response. Replacement scrumhalf Jonny Weimann and Tate Williams crossed for England either side of a second Shields try, but the deficit was already too steep to chase down.
The result stretches the Junior Springboks’ winning run at the Junior World Championship to ten matches in a row, their longest streak in the competition’s history. Only New Zealand’s run of eleven straight wins between 2016 and 2018 stands ahead of them now.
Kevin Foote’s side will defend the title they won in Italy last year when they face the winner of Monday’s other semi-final between France and New Zealand. That final is set for the Mikheil Meskhi Stadium in Tbilisi on 18 July.
For a team that has now beaten Uruguay, Georgia, Wales and England on the way to a second straight final, the message out of Tbilisi is a simple one. This group does not rely on any single name to win big matches. It relies on all of them.
📸 Images via World Rugby
