Online Reporter
The Junior Springboks broke a drought that has lasted 13 long years by powering to a 23-15 win over the Junior All Blacks in the final of the World Rugby Under-20 Championship in Rovigo in Italy, on Saturday night.
The word ‘powering’ is the most apt one to use to describe how Riley Norton’s team won South Africa’s second global under-20 title (it was the World Junior Championship when they won it in 2012) for although there was only eight points in it at the end, the winners were so dominant that they should have lost by a lot more.
Indeed, they might have wondered if fate was against them when they had a try to their impressive scrumhalf Hashim Pead chalked off with 18 minutes to go.
It was the right call, for the replay showed that the New Zealand scrumhalf was blocked when Pead peeled around from a dominant scrum to dot down for what at the time looked like the clinching try. They were 16-8 ahead at the time, and the try would have put the All Blacks out of the game.
Then minutes later, flyhalf Vusi Moyo, so impeccable with his goalkicking boot in the entire game and throughout the tournament, missed a penalty. There had been other opportunities missed by the Junior Boks, such as when wing Jaco Williams ran onto a Moyo cross kick but just couldn’t dot the ball down.
It was a night where the Junior Boks had been denied by several of those fine margins, and the All Blacks disrupted them with their defensive lineout early on, yet the one thing that remained constant was the powerful South African scrumming and equally forceful driving that kept the Junior All Blacks on the back foot for most of the way.
The Junior Boks also had a telling territory advantage, and the Junior All Blacks would have felt they were being suffocated for much of the game. In that sense, they did well, with their defence that won them their semifinal against France keeping them in the game until finally the Boks made it safe when fullback Gilemo Mentoe ran onto a kick with under four minutes left to power his team into a 21-8 lead that became 23-8 with Moyo’s successful angled conversion. —SuperSport.
