Famous French Names Fight Back To Floor Wales U20s

Wales U20s coach Jason Strange watched his his side lose a 13-point lead to end their age group Six Nations campaign in third position in the table.

The sons of two very famous fathers brought a bright start by Wales to an abrupt end in Montauban as the home side made it 11 successive Under 20 championship wins for France as they triumphed 40-20 on Friday night.

Romain Ntamack, son of the former France and Toulouse legend Emile, and Alex Roumat, son of Biarritz and France lock Olivier, ran the show as France hit back from a 13 point deficit to win at a canter. Ntamck ended with 15 points and Roumat also picked up a try to rob Wales of a possible second place finish.

There was a full house of 10,000 at Stade Sapiac, but they had to bide their time before they had anything to shout about after a brilliant start from Keiran Williams visiting side. Having stemmed the expected fast start by France, Wales struck in the fourth minute with a try from No 8 Aled Ward.

It was the ever impressive outside half Ben Jones who spotted a miss match in midfield and carved his way through. He ran up to the posts and then found Ward on his shoulder for a great opening score.

Jones added the extras and then kept the scoreboard moving with two penalty kicks. But that was as good as it got for Wales, who then found increasing difficulty in containing the powerful home pack. They creaked at the scrum, lost the battle on the gainline and eventually conceded six tries to finish third overall.

The game turned in the final five minutes of the first half when France made the most of an extra-man when Wales full back Rhun Williams was sent to the sin-bin by Scottish referee Mike Adamson for a high tackle. While he was off the field France conjured up two tries to turn their 13 point deficit into a 14-13 lead at the beak.

The first try went to livewire scrum half Baptiste Couilloud and then his half-back partner Ntamack crossed two minutes later with a brilliantly deft kick through and regather in the Welsh 22. Ntamack converted both and France were ahead.

Once they got in front they simply got on top of Wales up front and forced them into error after error. It became one-way traffic as Roumat picked up at the base of another powerful scrum five metres out and drove over for the third try on 50 minutes.

There were two more tries in the next 10 minutes, as centre Pablo Uberti powered his way over and then full back Geoff Cros raced in. Theo Millet then added a sixth score and on the stroke of time what would have been a seventh score was ruled out by the TMO.

Wales grabbed a consolation score from replacement outside half Arwel Robson a minute from time after finally getting their hands on the ball. Robson also added the wide angled conversion.

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *