"Everybody wants to take us out" – England U20s coach Mark Mapletoft relishes the challenge of U20s Six Nations
Today at 06:10 AM
By Harvey Allen
England U20s head coach Mark Mapletoft claims his side "genuinely haven’t even spoken about" the grand slam, after a ruthless victory over rivals Scotland. Mapletoft's side won their third match out of as many to stay at the top of the U20s Six Nations table, now three points ahead of France.
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When asked about working towards the grand slam, Mapletoft replied: "Ah, the old classic. No, we genuinely haven’t even spoken about it. These lads set high expectations for themselves.
"It's always different when you are defending champions and you’re trying to retain something: you get put on a pedestal, it gets talked about a lot. Everybody wants to take us out, because they perceive you to be the best team. The challenge is then to go and prove that you are, isn’t it?
"So, we're very much focused on Italy now and I'm sure the lads are switching to that at some stage: a few of them will go back to their clubs, they’ve got the Premiership Cup quarter-finals next week. We'll dust ourselves down, see where we're at when we come in on that Monday and do our usual preparation."
He also sang praise for his player-of-the-match hooker Kepu Tuipolotu. Bath academy graduate has already made five appearances for the club, mostly within the Premiership Rugby Cup, in which he scored a hattrick on debut.
Mapletoft commended his man: "You could see how the game was going to unfold that 'Keps' would be putting his hand up, particularly with his work off the mauls close to the line. Overall, really pleasing.
"He's moving on his set piece work as well, which is pivotal for him as a player moving forward at Bath: get his set piece right and everything else is a bonus. I thought tonight he was good in attack, good in defence and his set piece worked well and he got in on the end of things."
Looking ahead to Italy in two weeks time, the England coach believes that the fixture against Scotland was a much more representative performance to how this England team can perform.
"It's different conditions out there: fast track, no rain, wind was alright. I thought we were clinical, but we probably still left a few bits out there. If we're being brutally honest, towards the end I think, whilst there were some good [defensive] sets, we were really slow to get into the best positions we could to put Scotland under pressure.
"I actually think they retained possession pretty well. So little small things, rather than big areas that we felt coming into the game on the back of playing two games in the rain, we hadn't really fired an attack as much as we liked."
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