When Wales lost 92-0 to New Zealand at the under-20 World Championship in 2012, it was written that the players had received a lesson they would remember for the rest of their lives.
The following year the tables were turned.
A young Wales team which contained Samson Lee, Ellis Jenkins, Rob Evans, Tom Habberfield and Tom Prydie beat the Baby Blacks 9-6 in the rain in South Africa.
It does happen. But don’t bank everything on the Wales U20s class of 2023 turning around matters when compared with their French counterparts.
Sunday evening in Oyonnax saw the French youngsters dish out a 67-17 hiding to Byron Hayward’s team. There were 11 home tries, some of them run in from long distance as the boys in blue played with skill and pace. One draft of statistics showed Wales made 110 carries for 422 metres, while France made 129 carries for 890 metres. The hosts weren’t so much playing at a different level as playing a different game.
Their players looked supremely well-prepared, alert and able to make good decisions under pressure. They looked like athletes, whereas too many Welsh players looked off the pace, a notable exception being the 18-year-old schoolboy Morgan Morse, with the skipper Ryan Woodman also doing his best.
Later, Wales U20 head coach Byron Hayward cut a resigned figure, saying: “When you look at the two teams out there, it’s really hard to see that they are the same age. It looked like men against boys.
“You’d think there were 30-year-old men with the power and pace that they had. What can you do? Our boys are trying their best. It is what it is. It’s where we’re at.“
France had a number of players in their ranks who have high-level experience, including their captain and inside centre Émilien Gailleton, the leading try scorer in the Top 14, and Baptiste Jauneau, of Clermont, and Hayward was asked if preparation had been a problem or whether the standard of competition the players played in was a factor.
“It’s definitely the latter,” he said. “They have a number of players who are playing Top 14 rugby week in, week out. Our competitions, as you can see with this tonight, is it ever more evident that we’re a country mile behind in terms of the preparation we are giving our players? Because they’re trying their best, so what can you do?”
'This has been coming for a long time'
Indeed, what can you do?
Rewind seven years and Wales banked an U20s Grand Slam, along the way dispatching a France side which turned up at Colwyn Bay with Antoine Dupont at scrum-half, Anthony Belleau at fly-half, Anthony Jelonch in the back row and Damian Penaud on the bench.
Since then, fortunes have diverged at age-grade level for the two nations. France have won two U20 World Cups, while Wales have bumped around in the Six Nations basement since 2018, finishing fourth twice, fifth three times and bottom this year. How have the two taken such different roads?
“This isn’t an overnight thing,” said a close observer of the age-grade scene in Wales, who did not wish to be named. “Something like this has been coming for a long time.
“The best French rugby kids are centralised in Marcoussis from the age of 16 to 20. They live there, study there and do their training there in a full-time environment. There would probably be a total of 45 to 50 of them there.
“They have access to some of the best coaches in France — top-quality, high-performance guys. For their game-time, they go back to their clubs at the weekend.
“France winning two U20s World Cups hasn’t just happened. It’s because they have set in place a system that gives their youngsters the best possible chance to succeed. They have a brilliant environment to work in and are developing outstanding rugby players.
“Eleven months ago, France U18s beat Wales U18s 66-21. The writing was on the wall then and some of those players would have played on Sunday evening at U20 level.”
So what happens to a talented 15-year-old male rugby player in Wales? He isn’t dispatched to a Welsh Marcoussis, that’s for sure.
"If you have any talent you will go into a regional U16s academy,” continued the source quoted above. “There can be up to 120 players at certain academies at that age. At U18s, that can be narrowed down to 60, but it‘s a big number to attempt to service."
Coaching is key
“Coaching is key in developing youngsters, because skills have to be worked on and nurtured," the source added.
“The WRU used to have a coaching development manager called Leighton Morgan and he’d have a notice board in his office with the names of the top 30 coaches in Wales at that time. Leighton would write a plan on how a coach could get better, to get himself, say, up to number five or even number one. I’m not sure the coach education is there any more.
“There’s so much wrong. We have these college leagues which I’m sure some people think are great, but you had one team winning a game 142-0 last season — and that’s supposed to be elite U18s level. You had two teams there who were calling themselves high performance. But who benefits from that kind of exercise?
"Ireland have their private schools, France have their system, Italy made great strides under Conor O'Shea. The worry for Wales is we are being left behind. Italy are going to go further away from us, the way we are going.
“My own view is that, as a starting point, the Welsh Rugby Union should take back control of the regional academies.
“I know such a view wouldn’t be popular with everyone, but if you centralise matters you’d have more accountability and be better able to monitor player development to make sure standards don’t slip. Unless they get that control back, the development game in Wales is finished.”
The fans' Wales Six Nations verdict: Have your say
French players were athletes
Patrick Horgan coached Wales to the semi-finals of the Junior World Championship in 2008, guiding a side which contained Sam Warburton, Leigh Halfpenny, Justin Tipuric, Jonathan Davies, Dan Biggar and Rhys Webb.
He watched the game in Oyonnax and also feels there are questions to be answered. “The French boys looked like athletes on Sunday evening, some of our boys didn’t, yet I’d imagine they are all in academies. Why aren’t they looking like athletes? Why are our boys not as fleet-footed like theirs?
“The regions have been looking after these kids all the way through, yet there’s only one player out of 23 on Sunday who actually looked the business and that was Morgan Morse, a schoolboy. Maybe those in charge of all this development have to stand up and be counted.”
The shining light
Morse distinguished himself as the ship went down. The clock was well into the red and Wales were 50 points adrift when he ran 80 metres in pursuit of a kick upfield, shoving a French player when he arrived on the scene.
Horgan uses the example of the Ystalyfera pupil to suggest individual players have a role to play as well. “You can blame the structures, but there’s also a level of personal responsibility,” he said. “I looked at that boy Morgan Morse and watched him chasing down kicks and showing a huge amount of hunger and determination.
“There’s a certain attitude to playing rugby. Morse was showing it and has a big future. If he develops fully, he could go all the way — Wales, even the British and Irish Lions. I just liked the way he put his heart and soul into every single thing. Sam Warburton was the same as a player, Halfpenny was the same, Tips was the same, Josh Turnbull, Jon Davies and Biggar as well.
“Chasing after kicks in the 83rd minute is nothing to do with coaching and nothing to do with structures. It’s just down to the individual.
"Maybe our skills deficit can be traced back to 12 or so years ago when people seemed to be trying do what made the national side successful at the time: exhaust the touchlines, earn the right to go wide, carry hard, hit rucks and so on.
"I can guarantee you if you went to a local rugby club where dads were coaching at that time, under-11s, under-12s, under-13s, you would have heard ‘exhaust the touchlines, guys; around the corner; carry hard, exhaust the touchline.’
"It was going on at most clubs in Wales for a number of years. Some of those boys who played against France on Sunday evening would have been playing junior section rugby at the time, aged eight to 10.
"I am not blaming anyone, but maybe we forgot a bit about skills development at the time. Maybe we forgot about evasion, about running into space and putting the ball into space, avoiding the contact, making good decisions. "
What to make of it all?
Welsh rugby is in a mess almost everywhere you turn right now. But Sunday night in Oyonnax was as sobering as anything we have seen for some time.It's not a result that should easily be forgotten about.
The Welsh Rugby Union and those responsible for development in Wales owe it to aspiring rugby players to come up with a plan to improve matters, and quickly.
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