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| Luke Eves in action for England U20s |
| Redman promises more from young England stars |
| 2 February 2008, 9:33 am |
| By Staff |
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| England Under 20 coach Nigel Redman believes his “athletic and exciting” side can continue to improve after beating Wales 28-15 in their opening Six Nations game. |
Noah Cato (Saracens), Miles Benjamin (Worcester Warriors) and Luke Eves (Bristol Rugby) scored superb tries with fly half Alex Goode (Saracens) adding 13 points with two conversions and three penalties.
They did so after their forwards provided a steady set-piece platform and impressed with the ball in hand to impress the 4,554 crowd at Kingsholm last night.
“I’d said in the week that this was a very athletic and exciting side and when we got in open spaces we were very good,” said former England and Lions lock Redman.
“For an hour we dominated the game, scored some terrific tries, had one disallowed and could have got a couple more.
“There were times in the game when things didn’t go right and that gives us something to focus on.
“We’ll bond together this week, iron out those errors of judgment and inaccuracies and move forward positively. Maybe if we’d nailed all the try chances it might have been detrimental to us in the long term.
“My culture has always been to take people on with the ball in hand and I’m happy with how keen we were to do that.
“You don’t get many wins at all against Wales at this age group level and this represented a good start to the Six Nations for us.”
The bedrock of the win was the work put in by a forward pack including seven veterans from last year’s IRB Under 19 World Championship bolstered by the addition of Northampton Saints hooker Joe Gray.
But the most eye-catching feature was the sharpness of a back division that included two of last year’s Under 18s in Eves and Leicester Tigers’ Greig Tonks, players like Jordan Turner-Hall (Harlequins) and Ben Youngs (Leicester) who have featured strongly in the Guinness Premiership, and two wings who have scored on their debuts in the top-flight this season.
“Once we got some quality ball they found it very difficult to stop us,” said captain Hugo Ellis.
“Noah Cato, Miles Benjamin and Luke Eves scored some really good tries and we went close to scoring some more too.
“Wales contested really hard at the breakdown and caused us some problems and there was a 20 minute spell in the second half when things weren’t going for us.
“So there are things to work on, but overall it was a great start to the Six Nations for us. It’s always a massive result to beat Wales and now we’ll really look forward to taking it to the Italians.” |
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