For Wales under-20s lock Teddy Williams, a World Rugby Championship match with Argentina was not even his hardest test of the day.
Tackles and mauls were the stress relief for 18-year-old Williams, one of three members of the Wales under-20 side who is balancing the World Rugby U20 Championship with their A-level exams.
Williams, a pupil at Cardiff Welsh medium school Ysgol Glantaf, sat chemistry in the morning, was driven hastily across the city of Rosario back to the stadium just in time to help his side defeat the hosts 30-25 in a contest that kicked off at 1pm.
“We have three players involved with exams, we are balancing it.”
The day before the Argentina victory Williams sat a biology exam, while he also took a maths exam along with teammate Aneurin Owen, 18, ahead of Wales’ 32-13 defeat to France.
This week Williams, the son of former Wales international Owain Williams will sit further exams in chemistry, maths – with Owen – and biology.
Owen suffered a head injury after colliding with a teammate against Argentina, and while he was not fit enough to play against France, he is fit enough for a maths exam.
Their teammate, Leicester Tigers fly-half Sam Costelow, 18, had to travel even further to do his exams.
Different regulations meant he was forced to travel four hours and almost 200 miles to the capital city of Buenos Aires with a chaperone from the Wales management team in order to sit a geography exam.
Team manager Darren Joy has been responsible for making the arrangements, having contacted each of the respective schools three months ago to begin making plans.
While all the schools were willing to help, Joy endured a lot of red tape obtaining the requisite paperwork to ensure the players did not have to pick between the tournament and their education.
“The work the boys have put in is amazing, especially if you add in the fact that for a lot of them, it is their first time being away from home for a prolonged period,” head coach Williams added.
“They have needed to keep their focus on two fronts with the rugby and the exams and that has been really impressive from them.
“To be able to set-up the exams over here in Argentina, we give a lot of credit to team manager Darren Joy.
“He has made it as comfortable as possible for the boys to complete their exams and make sure it doesn’t impair on their preparation or performance.”
Wales conclude their group matches against Fiji in Santa Fe on Wednesday.
For three of the squad, it will be a test they relish.
bbc
Good on them for putting in all the effort.
U20 Championships:
Baby Boks 19/3 NZ – Halftime
Have only seen about last 10 or 15 min of first half but Baby Boks looking quite dominant, hope it lasts through the second half
Arghh silly drop of the ball by 13 gives scrum to NZ in a promising attack
TMO checking for NZ TRY
COULD BE a penalty try for early tackle by SA 10
yip penalty try and yellow card to 10. 19/10 46th min
Relieving penalty to SA after strong scrum from them inside 22. NZ have upped their game only good SA defence knocking them back
yellow card time over but SA attacking so will have to wait a bit to get back on
5m scrum SA super rush defence tackling NZ player and knocking him behind dead ball line
should have scored but poor handling and its knocked on but back for penalty anyway
opted for scrum now attacking few metres out
NOOO knock on just before the line NZ scrum 61st min
Baby Boks rushing things a bit so make mistake which costs a lot of territory and NZ penalty which they kick to touch
phew they knock on defensive scrum SA 65TH MIN
SCRUM PENALTY TO BABK BOKS! Strong scrum, saw NZ scrum struggling late in their game against Scotland
another big scrum earns a kickable penalty
Nohamba slots it 22/10 72nd min
NZ lineout deep in SA 22 after penalty kick for deliberate knock on
NZ score after 12 phases
converted SA 22/17 NZ 76th min
penalty to SA
NOHAMBA GETS IT. SA 25/17 NZ 79th min
game over after NZ knock after 16 phases
final score: SA 25/17 NZ so no bonus point for NZ. Apart from a short period in 2nd half thought Baby Boks were more dominant than score suggests.
SA top pool C so go on to semi finals along with Argentina, France and Australia
Other Results from round 3:
Eng 56/33 Aus; Wal 44/28 Fij; Fra 26/47 Arg; Ita 14/38 Ire; Geo 17/12 Sco
Well done Georgia. Disapointing result for Scotland who will have to work hard in next few games
Hi guys
France chance is back
Thanks to the baby boks
we get another chance in this championship
hope we will play as a team and have some defense this time !!!
rebop75 wrote:
Hi rebop75 how’s it going? I haven’t watched the games with France in this year’s Championship but even so was surprised at the result against Argentina, never mind the margin. That must be a good Argentina team. Your U20s were very good becoming champions last year and have some huge players, especially your no 8 Joseph. As far as I can tell the same front 5 started against Argentina as the ones who started and beat Wales so well in the previous game with the only differences in the pack being Joseph and Hocquet in for Haddard at 6. The only differences in the starting back line was 11 and 12.
Hopefully its a good semi-final and for you your team do well but not too well in the semi-final rather that they go on to win 3rd place. Being so far away I haven’t followed the junior rugby in SA closely so have been really pleased to see them in this tournament, they look very committed and well coached, also aggressive in carrying and defending with really strong working forwards, they will need to be very physical against France. SA have also shown some good backline play, in particular the star must be centre Pretorious, having seen him shine at last year’s tournament already I am surprised he isn’t playing Super Rugby? Both scrumhalves have looked very assured with good all round games, and I like what I seem in the flyhalf, he seems to be more of a running distributing player and looks to have quite a bit of pace too. I was especially impressed with how Hendrikse took it on himself to control the game with the boot when no 10 was off the field for his yellow card, and also how he stayed up after being taken out high by the NZ player, most other scrumhalves in the professional teams would have gone down injured or not and probably earned at the very least a yellow card for that possibly even a red, yet he stayed up and in the end it was only a penalty for it, that was poor by the refs especially as World Rugby as supposed to be clamping down on high tackles. Left wing is so fast, it was incredible to see in the last kick off from SA in their game against NZ how quickly he got to the NZ player who got the ball in his 22 from the kick off, and he managed to be quite disruptive in spite of his size.
Users Online
Total 184 users including 0 member, 184 guests, 0 bot online
Most users ever online were 3735, on 31 August 2022 @ 6:23 pm
No Counter as from 31 October 2009: 41,771,586 Page Impressions
_