Young stars need more room to grow
RUGBY MATTERS
A weekly look at the game's other talking points
A fascinating Junior World Cup has reached the business end of affairs so it's not too late to parachute in and catch some of the excellent action on the World Rugby stream which has been working pretty well while ITV also put a highlights package together.
The two semi-finals – France v England and South Africa v Ireland – will be staged at Athlone Stadium today and medal matches at the same venue in midweek. It's been a pretty vintage tournament, played in wildly varying weather conditions with a stack of great rugby and occasional moments of youthful naivety and poor decision making.
Georgia narrowly missed out on a semi-final place, Italy recorded an historic win over South Africa and, with the exception of Japan, the standard has been even and very competitive.
Let's pause though to consider what happens next for these young tyros. I mention that because yet again France are going great guns and frankly it will be a surprise if they don't claim a third title on the bounce although of course, thanks to Covid, the last of those titles was in 2019. This plethora of young talent is frequently mentioned, rightly so, when considering the rise and rise of Les Bleus but it's only half the picture.
Let's take the 2016 JWC for example when England were the dominant team, hammering Ireland in the final and South Africa in the semi-finals. Of that squad only two players – Max Malins and Joe Marchant – have progressed to have significant senior England careers and neither as yet has nailed down a starting spot. Johnny Williams has made a few starts for Wales after switching allegiance but many of those involved, alas, have not made the impact you might have hoped for. That includes skipper Harry Mallinder for whom great things were predicted.
Finishing a very distant ninth in that competition were France, their worst ever finish at the JWC and it was nearly 10th because they only just scraped home 27-24 against Georgia in the play-off game. Yet that French team included future world superstars Antoine Dupont and Damian Penaud, Grand Slam winner Anthony Jelonch, classy France fly-half Anthony Belleau and future internationals Pierre Bourgarit, Emerick Setiano, Peato Mauvaka, Baptiste Couilloud while Gabriel N'Gandebe, the Cameroon born speed merchant has made a splash with Montpellier and Alexandre Roumat did well with Bordeaux Begles and is now with Toulouse.
Not a bad crop by any criteria and just doing my Mystic Meg bit I reckon Australia this year – who ‘only' finished third in their very competitive pool and are condemned to the lower place play-offs this week – might be something of a sleeper a la France 2016. Australia 2023 have some serious young backs and back rowers putting their toes in the representative water.
So what's going on because for all its faults we must accept that, year-on-year, the RFU do a fine job in rounding up England's best U20 players and putting together a highly competitive team. I wouldn't necessarily rate the class of 2023 as vintage but there are a few major talents and here they are again in the semi-finals, all fired up and hoping to give the French a bloody nose. It's not impossible because England have a pack that can hurt and unsettle the French, but it's unlikely.
What happens to the young England tyros when they leave the U20 set up? The truth is that the vast majority, those who are not stellar individuals who immediately warrant a Premiership start, immediately suffer from a chronic lack of competitive meaningful rugby, certainly in contrast to the French.
In France, with its three professional leagues, there is rugby enough for everybody, so much so they can also embrace the world and employ a United Nations smorgasbord of young tyros. You don't have to swill around in an Academy system waiting for occasional minutes off the bench, you can be a starter playing 15-20 games a season on ProD2 or National 1, gaining that experience of controlling games and meeting the challenge of varying weather conditions and seasoned opponents.
There is also possibly a more nuanced feeder club system. Dupont for example, just as night follows day, was always going to end up at Toulouse but he started his career at Castres, not on loan from Toulouse but as a bona fide Castres player where he logged 60-plus T14 and European games – many off the bench but a significant number as a starter – over three seasons before he joined Toulouse still only aged 20. As was always the plan. Jelonch was very much the same although he stayed a year longer at Castres and bagged a T14 title with them in 2018 before making the inevitable move to Toulouse.
In England the development of players between 19 and 22 seems much more random. Just for a while the A League seemed the way forward and back in the day we watched some very decent A team games and finals. Indeed we even used to report on some of the games.
Meaningful A team rugby though has virtually died a death and I'm not wholly sure why. At a time when clubs are desperate for midweek footfall and bar takings, a properly organised and promoted 2nd XV tournament with real profile still has legs for me. There are so many contracted players, academy tyros and simply those with links to a club who suffer from too little rugby at present. It makes little sense in either playing terms or financially.
Or perhaps we read a little too much into it? Depending on a Union's policy, their U20 team can feature those at the extreme of the age limit – 20 years olds – and players two years younger at 18, indeed occasionally even 17. France in particular have always been prepared to pick some of the very youngest players available. And of those we are watching some are at the zenith of their careers, as good as they will ever be, while some have scarcely started. Everybody is on a different trajectory.
In England's team this year skipper Lewis Chessum, prop Afolabi Fasogbon, No.8 Chandler Cunningham-South and hooker Nathan Jibulu will be on the fast track – absolutely outstanding prospects who are nonetheless nowhere near peaking but you wonder exactly how much if anything we will see of many of the others in the coming season or even next. The challenge for English rugby is to keep such players involved and motivated and to give them that opportunity of a second growth spurt that so many need.
