Monday, 18 April 2011

The dates, venues and kick-off times have today been confirmed for Scotland under-20’s opening matches at the 2011 IRB Junior World Championship.
The tournament, which takes place in northern Italy in June, will see Peter Wright’s team go head-to-head with England, Ireland and South Africa at the pool stage. The opponents, venues and dates for their final two matches will be dependent on results in this initial stage.
The young Scots will open their campaign against South Africa on Friday 10 June in Padova, an Italian rugby stronghold located around 20 miles west of Venice.
They will then move on to nearby Treviso to play England on Tuesday 14 June, before concluding their group fixtures with a clash against the Irish in Rovigo on Saturday 18 June.
At the end of the pool phase, teams will be seeded based on the position in which they have finished in their respective pools. The fourth and fifth rounds of fixtures will take place on Wednesday 22 June and Sunday 26 June respectively.
Wright confirmed: “As ever, the IRB Junior World Championship represents an opportunity for our guys to step up and show what it means to play and win for Scotland.
“Our 6 Nations Championship campaign underlined the need to have 22 players all firing on the night if we’re to come away with the results we want. Looking ahead to June, the main task is knitting together the good things that happened in isolation during the 6 Nations.
“We’ll also need to hit the ground running, because the three teams we’ll be facing in the pool phase are all quality opponents and there won’t be much margin for error.
“I’ll be telling our squad to embrace the challenge, pull together as a team, and give a positive account of themselves on the world stage.”
The Scotland under-20 squad for the tournament will be named in early May. As part of the process of refining it, a Scotland under-20 A side will play Japan under-20 on the Murrayfield back pitches on Wednesday 20 April (kick-off time TBC).
The Scotland under-20 A team will be overseen by Boroughmuir’s Phil Smith, with John Dalziel of Melrose and Glasgow Warriors Elite Development coach Iain Monaghan as his assistants.
2011 IRB JUNIOR WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP, ITALY, 3-26 JUNE
POOL C
Friday 10 June, Stadio Plebiscito, Padova, kick-off 8.10pm (7.10pm BST): South Africa v Scotland
Tuesday 14 June, Stadio Comunale di Monigo, Treviso, kick-off 6.10pm (5.10pm BST): England v Scotland
Saturday 18 June, Stadio Mario Battaglini, Rovigo, kick-off 8.10pm (7.10pm BST): Ireland v Scotland
At the end of the pool phase the teams will be seeded based on the position in which they finished in
their respective pools:

This article was posted on 18-Apr-2011, 21:43 by Hugh Barrow.