Williams fears for a lost generation of Wales U20s
WALES U20 head coach Gareth Williams has admitted his concern the country’s next generation of promising talent could be lost forever due to the devastating impact of Covid-19.
Williams’ side completed their junior Six Nations campaign last year, but last summer’s World Rugby U20 Championship in Italy was abandoned.
The 2021 U20 Six Nations has also been postponed until later this year because of the pandemic with a date for the tournament yet to be decided.
The upshot has been
Wales’ best young players have not been able to play a game of rugby for nearly a year now with regional academy and A team fixtures off the cards too.
Asked about his worries young Welsh players might move away from rugby because of a lack of opportunity, Williams, below, told TRP:
“There is always a concerning element of that. Last week we were preparing for an U20 Six Nations just before it got postponed.
“We have a small player pool in Wales and there is a risk here that it could diminish further.
“We would have had camps in October, November through December and at the start of January and that would have refined the talent identification.
“We totally understand the delay to the Six Nations, but even if we had completed a full Six Nations programme, we have got to be aware there is still a retrospective talent identification element to undertake. “We are going to have to adapt when we can come out of this and make sure we can re-engage those players who missed out and explore the talent we know is out there.”
Williams has a wider development role heading up all the Welsh Rugby Union’s pathway teams.
He added: “Over the last ten months there have been no playing opportunities outside of PRO14, European rugby and senior international rugby. A lot of players I tend to work with don’t impact at that level of the game.
“There is a training environment for a large number of them with the regions.
“We’ll continue to work with the academies. It’s been brilliant the academies have been back up and running and we are going to continue those as well under Covid testing protocols.”