Junior Boks in France to kick off World Cup
JUNIOR Springbok captain Salmaan Moerat and his team are excited to kick off the World Rugby U20 Championship after arriving at their base in Gruissan in the south of France late on Saturday night.
The team departed Cape Town late on Friday and it took close to 24 hours for them to arrive at their hotel after flying via Paris and Montpellier and then finishing off the journey with a bus trip to Gruissan.
“We arrived last night and immediately went through our recovery procedures, and we are now very excited about what lies ahead,” Moerat said yesterday.
“We know the tournament is going to be a massive challenge, but we come off a solid preparation phase.
“We intend approaching the tournament game by game, and our first match is against Georgia, so we will do whatever we can to prepare as well as possible for that.”
The team had their first field session in France yesterday morning and Moerat said it was now a case of building on the preparation they did at home as they look forward to their opening match on Wednesday against Georgia.
“We did most of our preparation at home, so we will work on the finer details in the next few days,” Moerat said.
“We played against Georgia in our warm-up matches and we have an idea of what to expect from them. But they are going to be a tougher outfit on Wednesday, so we will do our homework on them, and hopefully it will go well.”
Wednesday’s match, the opening game of the tournament, will be played at Stade Aimé Giral in Perpignan at 6.30pm, and will be broadcast live on SuperSport.
Junior Springbok Chean Roux will announce his team for this encounter tomorrow.
The Junior Springboks will face Ireland on Sunday and host France on Thursday next week at the Stade d’Honneur du Parc des Sports et de l’Amitié in Narbonne in their remaining pool matches.
The two World Rugby U20 Championship semifinals will be hosted on Tuesday June 12 in Narbonne and Perpignan respectively, while all 12 participating teams will be in action in Beziers on Sunday June 17 for the final day of matches, which will conclude with the final, at Stade de la Méditerranée.