Peter Jackson: Let’s all start screeching for Wales tonight

On their day off at the Junior World Cup in Cape Town, the Welsh giant-killers could be found at the top of Table Mountain enjoying the view.
Getting there proved to be the proverbial piece of cake for a team catching its collective breath after smashing New Zealand‘s monopoly of the annual tournament. Until they ran into Wales in the rain at Stellenbosch last weekend, the apprentice All Blacks had won all 21 matches, scoring more than 50 points a game.
In beating the hitherto unbeatable, the Welsh teenagers had conquered their own Everest. Their reward is to be challenged to climb all the way back into the stratosphere and beat the Kiwis again this evening for a place against Argentina or South Africa in the final.
The holders are there by the skin of their teeth and the grace of the tournament rules, reprieved as the highest-placed runner-up from the three pools. Put in that context, the Welsh decision to send their players off another steep climb assumed symbolic proportion.
While the Wales management personnel made it on their own two feet, the players got there in four effortless minutes by cable car. “They have a big enough mountain to climb so it was essential they put their feet up,” Wales U20s manager Mark Taylor said. “It took us 90 minutes to catch up with them on foot.”
By the time the bristling Kiwis run out into Cape Town’s historic stadium at Newlands, Wales will have come down from the mountain ready to spring another ambush. Whatever the outcome, Kirby Myhill’s team has already achieved a comeback of such improbability that it deserved far more recognition than it got.
Exactly 12 months ago, during the pool stage of the same competition in Italy, New Zealand blitzed Wales  92-0, with 16 tries. The then U20s coach, Richard Webster, had little option other than apologise to the folks back home.
“After 15 minutes I was trying to count whether they had more than 15 players on the field,” he said. Two of them, lock Brodie Retallick and flanker Sam Cane, were on Test duty against Ireland yesterday.
What Wales achieved in beating the Kiwi juniors 9-6 amounted to a staggering 95-point swing. They left the holders “heartbroken”, according to New Zealand coach Rob Penney who duly trotted out the old baloney about nobody ever really beating the All Blacks, not even when they outpoint them on the scoreboard.
“You’ll never see a New Zealand team lie down and I don’t feel we were beaten,” Penney, Munster‘s new coaching director, said. “We were on the scoreboard, but we got into positions and it didn’t happen for us.” Trying to ensure it doesn’t happen for them twice in seven days is a measure of the task awaiting Wales. This year’s Kiwi crop may not match last year’s but one win against them was unheard of, let alone two.
“Last year they had the finest set of players seen at any U20 competition anywhere,” former Wales and Lions centre Taylor, said. “In the heat of Rovigo, our inexperienced team fell apart. This time, the weather was more in our favour and New Zealand didn’t manage the game as well in the conditions.’
Wales built their win on an all-Scarlets front row as propped by the suitably mighty Samson Lee on the tighthead and Rob Evans on the other side of the hooker Myhill who, like Ospreys full-back Ross Jones and fly-half Matthew Morgan, had experienced last year’s roasting.
The pack lacks neither size nor muscle. Samson weighs in at 18st, another prop, the Blues‘ Will-Griff John is nearer 19st, Blues lock Matthew “Screechy” Screech is 6ft 6in, his team-mate, centre Cory Allen, is 6ft 4in and 15st.
“This is a more mature group and there was never any question they were going to be intimidated physically,” Taylor said. “Last week everything came together, in particular our kicking game.
“We knew we’d probably have to play them again. We also know this will be another massive test. They produce so many great players that they are probably still favourites.
“Beating them has given us a terrific boost but we also know their camp’s been stung. The one thing we won’t lack is motivation, not when we’re playing the defending champions in one of the rugby world’s great stadiums for a place in the final.”
Just like last autumn, Wales are left to fly the British flag at a World Cup on their own.
Wouldn’t it be something if Samson, ‘Screechy’ and the other young guns were to send the All Blacks screeching out of the final in Cape Town tonight….?