Will Ireland U20s and Richie Murphy be happy to have gotten away with a draw yesterday, after England pummelled their try line in the dying moments?
Or will they rue their inability to but the game to bed after going up by ten points with 15 minutes to play, in a game where their out-half, Sam Prendergast, missed four straight forward conversions?
Head coach Richie Murphy acknowledged that the back-and-forth nature that we saw in the match is something to be expected at that level, saying that "under-20s rugby has a tendency to do that. Defences are always on the back foot."
But while he seemed at peace with the result, he was clearly displeased with some of the officiating in the match in regards to high tackles and head shots.
Ireland U20s Star Centre Could Miss Crucial Australia Game
𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐃! 🟥
Hugh Cooney sent off for a high challenge causing a nasty clash of heads.#ENGvIRE | #WorldRugbyU20s pic.twitter.com/3AQQALoyzE— Virgin Media Sport (@VMSportIE) June 24, 2023
READ HERE: Balls.ie's Greatest Ireland U20s XV Of All-Time
Ireland centre Hugh Cooney will likely miss his side's pivotal clash with Australia on Thursday, after being shown a red card for his high shot on Jacob Cusick.
Murphy agreed with the referee's decision but felt that he missed illegal tackles from England - a point that Ireland captain Gus McCarthy had been making to the ref throughout the match - and cited the incident which saw the ref send England's Greg Fiselau to the sin bin, but miss another high shot moments before.
I can understand why it’s a red card, but there are three or four head shots in the game that have been missed.
There was a double head shot when [England flanker Greg] Fiselau got a yellow card.
I don’t know what’s happening there. We’ll have to see what they decide and if [Cooney] will be available for the next game.
"I'm a little bit disappointed the way we finished the game," added Murphy.
"We had opportunities to close it out and we weren't quite able to do that.
"I was very happy with the level of effort that the players made but we needed to be more accurate to finish that game out.
"But I thought we played some really good rugby, to score six tries like that is quite hard to do. The pitch is quite heavy and it probably doesn't suit us as well as our guys would like but I thought they stuck in the fight really well when we went behind in the second half and came back really strong.
"The one thing that we would have probably liked to have done better is to get out of our end a bit easier; we probably didn't kick as well as we'd have liked."
SEE ALSO: The 2016 Ireland U20s Team That Made The WC Final - Where Are The Now?
