Bracken keeps England on course

Mark Mapletoft commended his England U20s side for continuing to find solutions and adapting to their problems but knows that his team cannot afford any more sloppy starts if they are to go deep in the competition.

England, who had earlier this month been well beaten by Georgia 45-17 in their final warm-up match, opened their World Championship campaign with a 40-21 victory over Argentina after recovering from a poor first quarter that saw the Six Nations champions trailing 14-0.

Debutant winger Jack Bracken scored a hat-trick, while Ben Redshaw, Billy Sela and Henry Pollock added further tries as England flexed their muscles in the second half ahead of their second Pool C game against Fiji on Thursday.

Elsewhere on the opening day of the competition, three-time reigning champions France beat newcomers Spain 49-12 to move top of Pool A, while Wales were beaten 41-34 by six-time winners New Zealand. In Pool B, Ireland took an early lead as they dominated Italy 55-15, while Australia saw off Georgia 35-11.

England’s next opponents Fiji succumbed to a 57-7 demolition at the hands of tournament hosts South Africa, who Mapletoft’s men face on Tuesday July 9 in their final pool outing.

Mapletoft told The Rugby Paper: “A good outcome in the end. Everything we tried to work with the lads on in terms of their ownership and adapting to problems, which is a key part of our pathway, paid off. They’ve proved over the course of a number of games that they can find solutions. Coming in off the back of a disappointing second game in Georgia, to go 14-0 down it would have been very easy to have been found wanting but we found solutions.

“Let’s not get carried away. We had a poor 20 minutes, managed to pull it round and it’s the first of five games we’ve got to play in 21 days. We were poor with the ball in the first half, I know we managed to score two good tries but our accuracy, urgency, work rate to get set in defence needs to be more consistent if we’re going to be the best team in this competition.

“Being relentless is one of our key drivers and that doesn’t matter if it’s 0-20 minutes, 20-40, 40-80, being relentless means doing it for the entire match. They’ll be guys that get an opportunity on Thursday to make an impact and if they make as big of an impact as Jack (Bracken) did then they’ll put themselves in a decent position.”

Saracens winger Bracken, 18, is the son of World Cup winner Kyran and was one of a number of debutants that impressed in yesterday’s win with Mapletoft believing his treble will fuel the fire for the next batch of youngsters to be unleashed in the next round, giving their short five-day turnaround.

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