U20s stay flexible on worlds

The New Zealand Under 20s are mindful of having a Plan B to their attacking strategy ahead of next month’s world champs in Georgia.

Last year in England, New Zealand clearly had the most talented backs — such as Shaun Stevenson and Jordie Barrett — and ability to play high-octane rugby, but when the weather turned and the refereeing and opposition tactics were not conducive to running rugby, they did not handle the pressure, their loss to Ireland leading to a fifth-place finish.

“We’ve looked at our attack structures and where we want to attack,” says New Zealand coach Craig Philpott.

“We’re hopeful about the weather in Georgia and that will play in our favour.

“We also have some new rules being trialled around the scrum, so teams have to hook the ball, for example. UK teams will have to adapt.”

“I don’t think we want to go away from the way we play . . . and particularly the climate we are going into, so there won’t be massive change, but there are some areas we are interested in tweaking.”

New Zealand will get to try out some of those attacking structures tomorrow against Fiji on the Gold Coast when the Oceania Under 20 championship kicks off. There is still much to play for among the 31 players, as the final cull for Georgia will see 28 travelling to the world champs.

Canterbury halfback Ere Enari is the vice-captain and with the green light to control some of the options.

“We haven’t quite got that far yet [with tweaking the attack] but the learnings from last year are that we shouldn’t be too one-dimensional and be able to adapt on the day,” says the 19-year-old.

He is one of four former St Kentigern College First XV players — the others being flanker Dalton Papali’i, halfback Carlos Price and centre Braydon Ennor — so Enari knows a bit about high performance teams. He was at first five in the fine 2012-13 First XV which racked up an unbeaten streak of more than 50.

Things have not all been plain sailing for Enari since he left school, with a broken leg in 2015, but he did play for the 2015 NZ Universities — he is in his third year of a BCom at Lincoln — before appearing in nine games for the 2016 Mitre 10 Cup Premiership champions Canterbury. Now he is on a Crusaders training contract.

But before Georgia, he and the team need to front in Australia. “It’ll be a bigger challenge this time as we only get one crack at Australia [May 6].”