U20s 6N: England v Scotland: Freddy Douglas returns as one of five changes for Newcastle mission
02/19/2025 12:26 PM
SCOTLAND UNDER-20S head coach Kenny Murray has made five changes – all in the pack – to his starting XV for Friday night’s age-grade Six Nations round three clash against England in Newcastle.
Full-cap Freddy Douglas makes his comeback at openside flanker after two and a half months out with an ankle injury, while Ollie Duncan steps up from the bench to start at blindside, with Billy Allen dropping to the reserves and Christian Lindsay out the match-day squad altogether.
Bart Godsell takes over from the benched Charlie Moss in the second-row, while two changes to the front-row sees Seb Stephen of Edinburgh Accies swapping in at hooker for the benched Joe Roberts, and Jake Shearer swapping in for Oli McKenna at loose-head.
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With Hector Patterson having not recovered from a foot injury in time, fellow Edinburgh Rugby academy prospect Hamish MacArthur takes over as scrum-half replacement, alongside stand-off/full-back Ross Wolfenden and centre Campbell Waugh, who both came off the bench against Ireland.
“I think just physically, being in the environment, Freddy lifts everybody that’s around him,” said Murray of the impact Douglas has had within the squad. “He’s now had experience of training and playing with the Scotland national team, playing in the Emerging Scotland team, playing with Edinburgh, so with those opportunities he’s gathered a lot of experience, which he’s going to be able to share. But it is also what he does as well. His intent just brings others with him so he sets standards that others need to follow.
“He’s definitely a very humble guy, and he’s a quiet guy as well, but I suppose that’s why he’s a good leader, because when he does speak, people will listen to him, and they know that he’s saying things that are important and worthwhile. He’s good for the environment and good support for JV [team captain Johnny Ventisei]. He’s the sort of guy people will follow on the pitch and that’s what we’re looking for this weekend.
“He makes up the back row with Oliver Duncan and Reuben Logan, which is the first time we’ve had that trio together, so I think it’s really exciting.
“Then Jake [Shearer] has been in amongst the group for the last few weeks, training well, so we want to give guys the opportunity to play,” Murray continued, turning his attention to the other changes in the line-up. “Seb Stephen at hooker, has been up there as one of our top two hookers – there’s not a lot between him and Joe – so, again, it’s about giving him an opportunity. I think he did well when he came on. I think all the subs have done well when they’ve come on over the last few weeks. If you watch them two games back, they’ve all made an impact, made a difference.
“Bart [Godsell] came on in the Ireland game and definitely made a real impact. He had 13 tackles in 40 minutes, so he’s earned his right to be in there. He’s been involved for a few years now through the SQ programme. He plays down at Loughborough and I went down to watch him play at the start of this year, so he’s been on the radar for a while, and we’re looking forward to seeing him go up against some of his mates on Friday night.”
Friday is a daunting challenge for Scotland, up against an England team who are unbeaten in the championship so far, and who are the reigning World Championship and Six Nations title-holders, but Murray believes the timing couldn’t be better, with his charges having had a fallow week to digest their two defeats against Italy and Ireland, then recover and refresh before firing into a match-week where they really have nothing to lose.
“Last week the SQ boys went back home, and the Scotland-based boys trained with Glasgow Warriors on the Tuesday and then with Scotland on the Thursday,” Murray explained. “So, they get a bit of downtime around that, but also had two good training experiences, which the boys enjoyed because you get challenged training at a higher level against Duhan van der Merwe and these guys.
“Then we came back in on Sunday and did our clarity day stuff, we trained on Monday, went home on Monday night, came back in this [Tuesday] morning and trained this morning. And that’s us now. We’ll go to Newcastle tomorrow, play Friday night, and back home on Saturday.
“It’s going to be a big challenge. They’re world champions and they’re at home, so there is no pressure on us: the pressure’s on them to go and perform the way they’ve performed in the last few games. We know we can go out and express ourselves and have a go at them. We’ve got to go toe-to-toe physically with them, as anybody would if they want win against England.”
“The frustration for us against both Italy and Ireland in our first two games is we should have done better.” Murray added. “We’ve got to be honest with ourselves. Against Italy, we felt that’s a game we should have won. We had a set-piece that was good enough to give ourselves a platform, but there was parts of the game we weren’t accurate enough in. Then against Ireland, just a poor first 20 minutes gave them a foothold in the game that was hard to come back from, but at one point we’re 26-15 and we could have scored but got a disallowed try. We could potentially go to 26-23, and you’re in the game – but at international level you give those easy starts then you can’t expect to win games.
“This week, we’ve spoken about starting fast, being really disciplined, not making mistakes, playing in the right areas, and not giving teams an opportunity to get easy tries against us.”
Scotland U20s (versus England U20s at Hive Kingston Park in Newcastle on Friday 7.15pm – live on BBC iPlayer): J Brown; N Moncrieff, J Ventisei ©, K Yule, F Watson; M Urwin, N Cowan; J Shearer, S Stephen, O Blyth-Lafferty, B Godsell, D Halkon, O Duncan, F Douglas, R Logan. Subs: J Roberts, O McKenna, J Stewart, C Moss, B Allen, H McArthur, C Waugh, R Wolfenden..
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