{"id":460157,"date":"2026-03-06T05:36:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T05:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/460157\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T05:36:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T05:36:10","slug":"massive-frustration-moving-it-makes-a-lot-of-sense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/460157\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Massive frustration… moving it makes a lot of sense’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Northampton<\/a> Saints head coach Sam Vesty has thrown his weight behind Pat Lam\u2019s call for the Under-20 Six Nations<\/a> Championship to be moved to stop clashes with the PREM Rugby Cup.<\/p>\n

Bristol<\/a> Bears boss Lam told RugbyPass last week that he would like to see age-group competitions moved to another part of the season so that clubs can use their top youngsters in the competition.<\/p>\n

Saints travel to Exeter Chiefs<\/a> this weekend without James Pater<\/a>, Oliver Scola, Aiden Ainsworth-Cave<\/a>, Sonny Tonga\u2019uiha and Jonny Weimann<\/a>, who are all involved in England\u2019s Under-20s clash with Italy.<\/p>\n

And Vesty admits that Saints would have liked to have had them available for a competition where the main objective should be to integrate youngsters into the first team at a time when they have senior players away on international duty.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt stretches your squad and stresses your squad, obviously, having internationals away. So the competition wants to be about opportunity and young guys coming through to be the next generation of PREM and international stars.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then at the same time as that, the England<\/a> 20s, obviously, are playing the Six Nations, which is a massive frustration because we\u2019ve got two of the four England 20s props playing for England, and they can\u2019t play for us.<\/p>\n

\u201cTherefore, it\u2019s stress on your squad. We have a competition that should be all about the youth and all that, and it\u2019s at the same time as the best kids are away.<\/p>\n

\u201cMoving it makes a lot of sense. I think it doesn\u2019t really matter where you move it to, as long as it\u2019s not in the PREM Rugby Cup window. You can do it at the same time as the women\u2019s Six Nations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest obstacle in the way of English under-20s players developing is game time. If you put the two competitions that they can actually play in at the same time, you\u2019re automatically losing five games they could have played.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s not the fault of the RFU and Premier Rugby, you know, they obviously can\u2019t just move it on their own. They need everyone else to back it as well. But it makes a lot of sense,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Northampton Saints head coach Sam Vesty has thrown his weight behind Pat Lam\u2019s call for the Under-20 Six…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460158,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-460157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}