AFTER A DIFFICULT couple of days for the Ireland U20s squad, Richie Murphy’s players are trying to focus on the challenge ahead as they look to secure the win needed to advance to the semi-finals of the U20s World Championship in South Africa.
Ireland play Fiji in Stellenbosch tomorrow [KO 12.30pm Irish time, Virgin Two] in their final Pool B fixture, but the squad have been rocked by the devastating events in Greece over the weekend, where two former St Michael’s pupils were found dead on the island of Ios.
Murphy opened his pre-match press conference today by reading a statement on behalf of the squad, before turning his attention to tomorrow’s fixture.
With a five-day turnaround between games, Murphy has made 11 changes to the team that started last Thursday’s defeat of Australia.
Some of those changes have been forced on the Ireland coach, with James McNabney and Rory Telfer both ruled out with suspension and Ruadhán Quinn completing return to play protocols. Meanwhile Harry West, who was initially named to start against Fiji, has since been ruled out with injury. Henry McErlean will now start at fullback with Hugh Gavin promoted to the bench.
Sam Berman and Josh Costello have also joined the squad in South Africa as injury cover.
“It’s a case of needs must,” Murphy said of the changes.
“We’ve been playing pretty tough fixtures over a five-day turnaround on a very, very heavy pitch.
So we’re in a position where we felt we needed to rotate the squad. We’ve brought 30 players that we were confident were able to fit into our team and where able to play the game at the level we needed to play it.
“Our focus was very much to make quite a number of changes in this round and in order to, one, we obviously have to win the game but if we win the game we know that we’re getting into a semi-final and that’s very much the focus.”
Despite the disruption, the squad are aiming to end their pool campaign on a high and book their place in the semi-finals.
“These guys are hungry and they’re always hungry to get better. So the English game, I suppose the feeling after was a little bit of frustration and that drove us into that Australia fixture where guys knew that it was a last-chance saloon.
“So we know that from now on all the games are must-win games. The Irish system helps us in that regard because the lads play highly competitive games from a young age, which normally is cup rugby.
“We feel like we’re in a good place in relation to that. It’s just very important that we concentrate on the job in hand, which is Fiji. Fiji against England were a very different side in the wet than they were the week before when they scored 37 points against Australia.
“The weather has picked up down here so it looks like it will be a dry day. They’ve moved the pitch, which is some ways is a good thing and in some ways is a bad thing but I think our guys will get a bit of a bounce from playing on a harder surface where we can play the game that we have been playing all the way through the year.”
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