Head coach Richie Murphy looks ahead to today's clash with England.
AFTER A FRUSTRATING week, the Ireland U20s will be glad to finally get to gameday with Richie Murphy’s side taking on England in their U20 World Championship opener in South Africa this afternoon [KO 12.30pm, Virgin 2].
“The training field is definitely a frustration but you can’t do anything about the weather,” Murphy explains. “There’s some slight changes in the way we play but we are who we are and we want to be true to the way we’ve played the game until now. So we’re not going to go massively away from what we’ve done in the past.”A familiar looking Ireland team will take to the pitch against England, with Brian Gleeson’s inclusion on the bench the only big surprise – the Munster player has been recovering from a knock.
The message to the players going into their tournament has been clear: the Six Nations is over, now it’s all about what they deliver over what promises to be a testing few weeks in South Africa. Probably from the very start of the year our focus was on trying to prepare to get ready for the Junior World Cup and compete at the highest level. “That’s never really changed.
“We haven’t really focused that much on them except from knowing they have some really good individuals that can really hurt you. We’ve been very much concentrating on ourselves, making sure our team performance is where it needs to be.
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