These U20 World Championships are something of a sprint.

Get to the final and you’ll play five games total. Ireland fell just short last year against a bruising French side that physically ground down any side in their way before blowing away the dust with their speed and pace in the backline. The final was no different. That shouldn’t be seen as a slight on the Irish side though; France are a chainsaw in these U20 World Championships because a lot of their star players can be readily available, as opposed to getting pulled back into the TOP14 for their clubs, where they regularly play roles that bely their ages.

That Ireland team did well until half-time before falling away but it should be clear that I think this generation of players have been the best Irish u20 group ever. Since the pandemic hit, the Irish u20s have been regularly keeping up with the status of the men’s national team when it comes to status. At the age grade where the demographical numbers game hits hardest, the Ireland u20s have consistently outperformed those numbers.

Three Grand Slams in the u20 Six Nations since 2019 is a killer stat. They were one bonus point away from adding another Six Nations title to that list this season just gone. Who stopped them? Italy. A sticky, hard-fought non-bonus point in Virgin Media Park meant that Ireland finished on 22 points. Another try in that game and Ireland win the title on points difference but no – Italy stopped them. Marco Scalabrin was borderline unplayable in that game for the Italians before Sean Edogbo won the game for Ireland late on.

Did that play into Ireland’s mindset this week? They’ll never admit it publically – teams rarely reveal the emotional engine of the week – but I certainly thought about it when I was watching this game.

It felt a little like payback. And, in paying it back, Ireland started their sprint to the knockouts as well as could have been hoped.

***

This game was a banana peel for Ireland. Italy have become a solid mid-level player at this age grade – replacing Scotland and Wales in the senior men’s tournament, to give you a rough idea of status – so this game in the plush surrounds of the DHL Stadium in Cape Town was far from a handy start, especially if we remember my little rhetorical setup there before the picture break. We barely beat these guys at home in the Six Nations so, by applying rugby maths, the same should have been true here.

But it wasn’t.

Why was that?

There were two primary reasons from what I could see.

To understand the first, we will look at the zones where Ireland had most of their possessions and then at Italy’s base game state.

Yep, you’ve noticed that too – 52% of Ireland’s possessions occurring in Italy’s half of the field is something of an aberration. You rarely see that kind of possession breakdown and it all relates to Italy’s tactical approach going badly wrong.

Italy’s Kick to Pass ratio was 3.3 passes for every kick and their Pass per Carry ratio was 0.5 passes for every carry. What does this mean? They were playing a more constricted version of Benetton’s base game state to the point they were essentially playing off-ball rugby.

Here’s a good illustration of how that kicking game worked;

Italy kicked to exit, Ben O’Connor mopped it up and Ireland retained possession on the landing – in this case, winning a penalty that we would eventually score from. This was the end result of almost all of Italy’s kicking plays. It’s not that Italy kicked badly – they were average – but Ireland’s management of those kicks in transition and at the lineout meant that Italy were locked out of the game. If it felt like Italy were mostly defending in this game it’s because they were; their off-ball game coupled with Ireland’s solidity on kick return and new on-ball tendencies meant Italy didn’t have a sniff.

At a basic level, Italy kicked at a high volume, Ireland managed those kicks really well, flowed into post-transition phases with real comfort or, when it suited, kicked even better in return.

When you combine that with proper physicality from the forwards, a very composed day from Jack Murphy as a handler and Sam Berman slicing through the Italian edge cover and maul cover anytime he touched the ball, it seemed, and you see how the score got to be so lopsided. Italy didn’t turn into a bad team overnight but the tweak in their style from the Six Nations – more kicking, less passing – matched up really badly with Ireland’s adaption post-Richie Murphy – less kicking relative to our passing and playing more phases of possession post-transition.

Our game against Georgia will pose different questions but anything close to this level of performance I think we win that one quite comfortably.

★★★★★ Sean Edogbo, Ben O’Connor, Hugo McLaughlin, Sam Berman

* I try not to rate younger players as harshly as I would on the full Wally Ratings so, for this tournament, I’ll be listing the highest-scoring players only.