Lion-hearted defence enough to see Junior Boks claim underwhelming bronze at Under-20 Champs

Jean Smith desperately holds on.

Another year, another bronze medal.

The Junior Springboks, by virtue of a 22-15 victory over England in Athlone on Friday evening, continued that dubious tradition at World Rugby’s Under-20 Championship and now, somewhat frustratingly, entrenched their reputation for underperforming at this tournament.

South Africa’s juniors have now been in no less than 9 third-place playoffs and can’t even be considered serial bridesmaids.

Instead, they’re the handsome, eligible bachelor who never gets his act together enough to actually make the step up to marriage.

Nonetheless, this achievement will provide some consolation for head coach Bafana Nhleko, who won’t reflect too fondly on a campaign where his charges never really hit any discernible peak.

Even in this game, the Junior Boks – predominantly through some grit and excellent scrambling defence – simply did enough without excelling.

They’ll take heart from an efficient performance in the first half, where they utilised their attacking opportunities well to score three tries from close range that was characterised by good and patient phase play.

Hooker Juanne Else and the flanker duo Corne Beets and an impressive Hennie Sieberhagen – a late replacement in the squad – all showed commendable strength to barge over and round off.

Yet their fundamental flaw remained steadfastly intact.

Whenever they seemed to establish a decent platform to pull away from, a set-piece penalty or indiscipline at the breakdown would undermine their progress.

Some suspect defence also allowed English No 2 Craig Wright to score the most attractive try of the match, a brilliant counter that saw powerful and prone winger Cassius Cleaves evade four defenders before feeding his fleet-footed hooker as a 80m move was sumptuously constructed.

The relatively free-scoring first 40 would give way to a scoreless second half as both teams displayed a lack of cohesion that perhaps explains why they were never able to really hit their straps in the tournament.

England eventually dominated possession and territory, creating at least four gilt-edged scoring opportunities, only to be undone by their own poor handling and superb Springbok tackling.

In fact, after merely having a tackle completion rate of just over 70% in the first half, the hosts improved significantly to jump to about 83%.

There was little else to celebrate, though.  

Point scorers:

Junior Springboks – (22)

Tries: Juanne Else, Corne Beets, Hennie Sieberhagen

Conversions: Jean Smith (2)

Penalty: Smith

England – (15)

Tries: Craig Wright, Zach Carr

Conversion: Connor Slevin

Penalty: Slevin