IRELAND U20s HEAD coach Richie Murphy believes his team can build on their Grand Slam success at the U20 World Championships, but admits the squad’s lack of match sharpness is a concern as the group prepare to fly out to South Africa.

Murphy named a 30-player squad for the tournament earlier today, with the group set to depart for Cape Town on Monday.

The Ireland U20s stormed to a brilliant Grand Slam success earlier this year but many of Murphy’s players have found their gametime limited in the weeks and months since.

It’s one of the only concerns on Murphy’s mind as his exciting group of players prepare for pool games against England, Australia and Fiji.

“The one thing we did tell the guys when they left after the Six Nations is that obviously, the night that we finished up we became Grand Slam winners, but we left them with a message that they have to come back better,” Murphy said.

“And in fairness to all those guys, that have come back, they’ve come back in really good condition and very hungry for that challenge that’s ahead of us. And so we’re very satisfied with what we saw when they were coming back in the door after a number of weeks where they had a little bit of downtime in order to get back into their athletic development and then get back into playing some games for the clubs.

But at this stage, most of these guys, one of the issues that we might have is that we haven’t played a huge amount of rugby over the last number of weeks.”

Ireland open their campaign against England on 24 June, as the U20 World Championships return for the first time since 2019.

“The guys that have missed out on it over the last couple of years, I know by talking to some of them that they feel it was a real big landmark missed in their rugby career, so our guys now this year have a great opportunity to get out there on the world stage and try put their best foot forward,” Murphy explained.

“It’s a great opportunity for them.

“But it’s going to be an interesting few weeks. Five-day turnarounds are tough and a squad of 30 – we’re bringing 17 forwards and 13 backs. So squad size it quite tight. Three games in 15 days and then obviously another 10 days for the last two (play-off games). It’s all hands on deck really.”

Murphy’s 30-player squad includes four uncapped players – scrum-half Jack Oliver and forwards Ronan Foxe, Max Clein and Dan Barron.

“Jack Oliver was with us during the early part of our (Six Nations) preparations and got injured, so he missed out on the back of that.

“Max Cline missed out on Six Nations due to injury. Initially he hadn’t been in the squad but through some good performances in the AIL, he fought his way in there.

“Ronan Foxe has been with us all the way through, just hasn’t had an opportunity to play. He’s been playing AIL for Old Belvedere and Dan Barron has been a regular member of the Trinity senior team playing in numerous positions all the way through the season, from second row all the way to seven. So Dan is getting an opportunity coming from the club game into this squad.”

Ireland stepped up their preparations for the tournament with a four-day camp in Italy last week.

“We played a game over there and had a good few days prep leading up to that game and that sort of put us into the position where we have a two-day camp this week and then we fly out on Monday, so guys are in really good spirits.

“Obviously they found out on Monday that they made the 30, in relation to that there’s been some guys who’ve been really unlucky to miss out and you know, there’s a number of guys there who really were holding up their hand and the strength of Irish rugby at the moment is that rather than only been able to pick 30, we’ve actually left players out of this one.

“We feel there’s guys who have been left at home who could really do a job in that Junior World Cup, which is a nice way to be.

“Like, this time last year we were preparing for a summer series where we were missing 12 of our starting 15. So this year, that’s a very different story. One of our matchday 23 is injured in Liam Molony, who unfortunately got injured a couple of week back. So he’s the only one out of that sort of matchday 23 to miss out. 

“So that alone and built on the back of the connections and the relationships that were built in the Six Nations puts us in a really good place going forward.”

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