Ireland<\/a> will round off what has been a largely disappointing Junior World Championship in contesting the ninth-place final. Having lost to England and Argentina in the pool stages, they beat the USA, and just about squeezed past Fiji to reach this point in the tournament.<\/p>\nDrawing a straight formline from the Six Nations where Ireland won four of five matches, England, whom Andrew Browne\u2019s side beat, will contest the third-place playoff against New Zealand. Wales and Scotland, who also lost to Ireland in the Six Nations, oppose one another in the fifth-place final.<\/p>\n
Injuries have been a significant issue, both before and during the tournament, but the coaches and players might reasonably have expected a little bit more in performance terms. Daniel Green shifts from outhalf to fullback, Charlie Molony moves to the right wing, with Cashel\u2019s Rob Carney restored to outside centre. Charlie O\u2019Shea is fit again and will wear the 10 jersey.<\/p>\n
There are no changes to the pack, while the team will be led once again by flanker Josh Neill in the continued absence of the injured Sami Bishti. Galwegians\u2019 Luke Murtagh, who last played in the Six Nations, is named as the replacement tighthead prop.<\/p>\n
Ireland retain eight of the starting team from a 30-27 Six Nations victory over Italy in Cork, while Italy have seven survivors from that game, one they led 17-15 at the interval.<\/p>\n
The tournament places a massive physical stress on young bodies and minds with a healthy chunk of Ireland\u2019s team asked to play through the five match days.<\/p>\n
Lineout woes have been a destabilising factor in previous games, so too handling, discipline and some of the defensive alignment and basic tackling. Ireland\u2019s attack has been excellent for the most part and they have managed to score tries freely, a characteristic that they are going to have to continue. Daniel Ryan has been a standout in that respect.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s plenty of talent, it\u2019s just a question of energy levels and if Ireland can summon a rounded performance that properly represents it.<\/p>\n
IRELAND: Daniel Green; Charlie Molony, Rob Carney, James O\u2019Leary, Daniel Ryan; Charlie O\u2019Shea, Christopher Barrett; Max Doyle, Duinn Maguire, Blake McClean; Joe Finn, Donnacha McGuire; Josh Neill (capt), Alex Lautsou, Diarmaid O\u2019Connell. Replacements: Rian Handley, Adam Cooper, Luke Murtagh, Se\u00e1n Walsh, Charlie Keane, Luke Coffey, Se\u00e1n David Walsh, Jack Deegan.<\/p>\n
ITALY: Pietro Cieli; Luca de Novellis, Giacomo Falchetto, Riccardo Cassarin (capt), Luca Rossi; Roberto Fasti, Mattia Andretti; Emiliano Mastropasqua, Valerio Pelli, Erik Meroi; Simone Fardin, Enoch Opoku Gyamfi; Antony Miranda, Davide Sette, Jaheim Wilson. Replacements: Ettore Patricio, Giacomo Messori, Luca Trevisan, Fabio Salvanti, Carlo Bianchi, Nikolaj Varotto, Alessandro Ragussi, Alessio Scaramazza.<\/p>\n
Referee: R Campbell (Sco). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Junior World Championship, ninth-place final: Ireland Under-20s v Italy Under-20s, AIA Arena, Kutaisi, 5.30pm Irish time \u2013 Live…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,39220,43],"class_list":["post-555043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-ireland-rugby-u20s","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555043","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=555043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}