France got the defence of their Under-20 Six Nations title off to a winning start as they scored eight tries to Ireland’s three in an emphatic 50-21 win in Perpignan.<\/p>\n
The bonus-point victory ensures that the champions end the opening weekend of the competition at the top of the table, ahead of Scotland on points difference.<\/p>\n
Ruben Pergad had an early score disallowed at Stade Aime-Giral but soon after Bordeaux centre Adrien Drault dived over in the corner for the opening try after accepting an off-load from Melvyn Rates.<\/p>\n
Ireland responded immediately when Josh Neill charged down an attempted French clearance, collected the ball and passed to Christopher Barrett, who ran in to score.<\/p>\n
Having been denied earlier, front row Pergad powered across the Irish line from a French rolling maul for try number two for the home side.<\/p>\n
Romeo Bonnard Martin barged his way through the Irish defence to touch down between the posts for his side’s third.<\/p>\n
Another enterprising move from the hosts saw replacement Antoine Latrasse run in for the bonus-point try, before Neill rumbled over beside the posts after Ireland had gone through the phases.<\/p>\n
On the stroke of half-time, France executed a rolling maul after a line-out and prop Matheo Frisach crossed, with Luka Keleteona adding his third conversion of the half to put 17 points between the sides at the interval.<\/p>\n
Soon after the restart, Frisach was denied a second score when he was adjudged to have temporarily lost control of the ball and knocked forward as he surged over the line.<\/p>\n
Barrett darted over for his second try to reduce the deficit and when Neill knocked over the conversion their side’s deficit was reduced to 10.<\/p>\n
France replied with Rates’ converted try in the corner and the hosts extended their advantage when Lucas Andjisseramatchi crashed over to ground for his team’s seventh touchdown.<\/p>\n
Baptiste Veschambre burrowed over the whitewash to complete the scoring and put the cap on an impressive performance.<\/p>\n
Ireland U20s host Italy next Friday (19:45 GMT), while France are away to Wales on Saturday (20:00 GMT).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"France got the defence of their Under-20 Six Nations title off to a winning start as they scored…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286684,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-286683","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}