U20s 6N: England v Scotland: Johnny Ventisei draws inspiration from video not so nasty
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SCOTLAND Under-20s head coach Kenny Murray decided earlier this week that preparation for tomorrow [Friday] night’s showdown against England should involve a team viewing of what many of the players must have thought was a video nasty during the first 30 minutes of the footage.
The date was 3rd February 2023. The venue was Twickenham Stoop. And the occasion was the opening match of Scotland’s U20 Six Nations campaign against an England team who flew out of the gates like a rake of thoroughbred colts, with Josh Hathaway (now a Wales international) helping himself to three of five tries scored as the hosts galloped into a 31-10 lead.
In truth, the scoreline flattered the bedraggled Scots at that stage, with Rudi Brown‘s powerful surge and Richie Simpson‘s neat offload having set-up a try very much against the run pf play for second-row Harris McLeod. That had been a brave act of defiance, but, if it had been a boxing match, the referee would have halted with half an hour played.
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Then something unexpected – although not altogether unique for matches between these two ancient foes – happened. Scotland bounced off the ropes, started swinging, and landed a few blows which visibly stunned their more muscular and highly-regarded opponents.
“We had Kerr Yule [then a 17-year-old schoolboy making his debut at this level and now in his third U20s Six Nations campaign] holding Chandler Cunningham-South up over the try-line to stop him scoring,” recalled Murray, the former Glasgow Warriors assistant coach who had taken over responsibility for the age-grade side the year before.
With Brown and Liam McConnell helping themselves to tries, and Simpson slotting four more penalties to go with the one he had scored during the first half, Scotland managed to get themselves into a 31-36 lead with fifteen minutes to go. They could have been further ahead: it took a desperate last-gasp tackle to stop Simpson breaking clear; Ben Afshar‘s chip over the top wreaked havoc in the home back-field before Lewis Chessum [younger brother of Ollie, who is at blindside flanker for the England senior team this weekend] managed to touch down behind his own line; and replacement hooker Jerry Blyth-Lafferty carried from near halfway to just five metres from the try-line.
Scotland were still ahead as the game moved into the final eight minutes, but there was to be no fairytale ending for the visitors – with a late try from Tobias Elliott plus a conversion and last minute penalty from Sam Harris snatching the home win – but what battling spirit the Scots had shown, and what a fright they had given their opponents.
It is a fond memory for Murray and any Scots who witnessed it, even if it didn’t quite end in glory – and the coach seems to have achieved his goal in revisiting that match as a means of inspiring his current crop of players that they can dare to chase the unthinkable dream at Kingston Park in Newcastle tomorrow night.
“Yeah, definitely,” said team captain Johnny Ventisei, when asked if the video session had boosted confidence amongst the players ahead of the daunting challenge ahead. “It shows that it probably can be done. You can take confidence from past teams who have been able to match them, so we’re just going to look to do the same.”
“We should just be excited about it. Most of the pressure is on them.So it’s on us just to go out and express ourselvesand leave all our stuff out there.
The young Scots are zero from two in the championship so far coming into this match, but Ventisei believes they have shown in patches that they have the potential to live with England – although the challenge will be to play at the required over the full 80 minutes.
“Looking back, we were probably disappointed with that first 20 minutes against Ireland,” the centre acknowledges. “Conceding 20-something points probably wasn’t good enough.It made it quite hard for us to come back, but I think that last 60 minutes really showed what we were about.
“So, we’re looking to start this game like we finished the last one.We should go out with confidence in how we playand go and match them physically. We know they’re a good side.They’ve showed that the last couple of years in the World Cup and Six Nations, but we’re excited to get in amongst itand show what we’re about.”
A product of GHA RFC and St Aloysius' College (with whom he won the U18 Schools National Shield in 2022 alongside current under-20s team-mate Matthew Urwin), and this is his third year in the Glasgow Warriors senior academy. Outside of rugby, Ventisei is studying business at Strathclyde University, which he has deferred for the 2024-25 academic year in order to focus on rugby.
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