IRELAND U20S HEAD coach Richie Murphy says his side drew inspiration from the senior team’s Grand Slam success on Saturday before going on to achieve the same feat.
The reigning champions successfully defended their Six Nations Grand Slam crown this evening in Musgrave Park, holding off a gritty challenge from England, who lost Monty Bradbury to a red card.
Ireland ran in six tries including a brace apiece for Hugh Gavin and Brian Gleeson while George Hadden and Fintan Gunne also chipped in to maintain their supremacy. Murphy was elated as he praised his charges for a job well done, but he tempered his words by mentioning the U20 World Cup, which is coming up later this year.
“They were fearless,” he said as the celebrations got underway out on the pitch.
“In fairness, they have been all the way through, haven’t they? Going in at half-time five points up, playing into the wind in the second half was going to be difficult but they were really brave the way they played. England loaded the back field, giving us the front line and asking us to play and in fairness, the lads played and did it very well.
“Really good play off one of the re-starts to get out and that ended up in Henry’s tackle that ended up in a red card. Fearless definitely but loads of things to work on and with a World Cup coming up, it’s exciting times for these guys.
“They were very calm all week. Very controlled. We watched the senior game together yesterday which was really a unique experience. Lads were singing in the team room. Then afterwards, we sat down and started analysing what can we learn from that game and they were starting to pick out things that they wanted to do today. We didn’t get it all right, but we got enough right to get over the line.”
England managed to bring the contest back to a one-score game in the final minutes as Tobias Elliott went in at the corner for his second try of the evening. There was some slight cause for concern before scrum-half Fintan Gunne responded with Ireland’s sixth try of the evening to settle the tie.
“The game just got broken up,” Murphy said about the final few minutes of the game. “A little bit distracted and the lads couldn’t quite finish it off which made it difficult. Our scrum came under a little bit of pressure. I still thought we had quite a lot of control in the game and when we got out of our end we were OK again. 20s rugby is a little bit like that anyway, there are big flow shifts and when you’re in your 22 it’s very hard to hold the opposition out.”
Remarking on the progress made throughout this campaign, Murphy added: “Massive progression in the few weeks. A lot of credit has to go to the coaches, Aaron, Mark Sexton, Willie Felone [sic] they’ve done an incredible job in preparing these guys and we’ve really been running a professional setup over the last few months since Christmas and the guys have really benefitted from that.”
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