U20s 6N: Scotland v Wales: Angus Hunter handed debut as Kenny Murray makes four changes
Yesterday at 12:20 PM
ANGUS HUNTER will make his competitive Scotland Under-20s debut against Wales in Friday night’s Six Nations round four match at Hive Stadium. The outside-centre has impressed playing for Heriot’s in the Arnold Clark Men’s Premiership this season, scoring seven tries in 13 matches so far, and gets his chance in the national age-grade side’s midfield thanks to the ongoing absence of skipper Johnny Ventisei with a swollen knee.
Campbell Waugh, who was a late call-up to the starting XV to face England a fortnight ago after Ventisei’s late withdrawal, is unavailable for this game due to a knee issue suffered in training today.
Head coach Kenny Murray has made four changes in total to his starting XV with the other three alterations all rotational and in the pack, with Joe Roberts swapping in for Seb Stephen at hooker, Oliver McKenna replacing Jake Shearer at loose head prop and Charlie Moss taking over from Bart Godsell in the second-row.
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Mark Fyffe of University of Edinburgh is set to make his debut at this level after being named on the bench. Cameron van Wyk will cover the back-three and Isaac Coates, who was first choice stand-off last season, is also among the replacements meaning he is in line to make his first appearance of the campaign.
Freddy Douglas will carry on as skipper of the team after taking over that role from Ventisei for the England game.
“It’s a bit of a bursitis, so there’s a bit of fluid in the knee and a bit of blood, so he’s just never recovered,” explained Murray of Ventisei’s injury. “It’s not long-term, it’s just if he gets another bang on it before it heals then he could end up being out for a few months, so it’s just too high risk. He’ll be out for the rest of the tournament. We’ve got to manage him because he's still got a Junior World Championship to play and we don’t want to risk anything impacting that.
"Angus has been training with us all throughout the prep window,” the coach added. “He came in with us in December and had some game-time in the Wales warm-up match. He’s been playing well with Heriot’s, and he’s been in all of our training right throughout and been really good, so he’s well deserving of his opportunity. I’m sure he’ll do well.”
Scotland have not won a Six Nations match since their 18-17 victory over Wales during the 2023 Championship. Despite losing the last 11 championship games on the bounce, Murray stressed that the team remain confident that achieving a change in fortunes is in their own hands.
“Even against England, it was a big scoreline, and some of it was down to England, but some of it was down to ourselves, we didn’t give a good enough account of ourselves,” he said. “I think just around the 30 minutes mark it was 12-8 we were down, and that 10 minutes before half-time really hurt us, three tries and a yellow card, and at this level of rugby you don’t come back from that.
"Same against Italy, we should have beaten Italy, we know that, we probably didn’t take our opportunities when we got them, and then against Ireland we had a poor 15-20 minutes and then we played really well for 60 minutes after that.
"So, it’s about putting that 80 minutes together and looking to try and turn that sort of pressure into points."
"We played Wales in a couple of warm-up games, so we know what they’re about, they’ve got some good players, they’re a very good counter-attack and turnover attack team, so we’re going to have to be on our toes on that side of things,” he continued. “And their drive has been good, they’ve scored drive tries in all the games they’ve played, so it’s going to be another tough game.”
"And then they beat Ireland [last time out], so they’re going to come here with confidence, having won two games against Italy and Ireland. It’ll be a tough game for us but one that we’re definitely capable of winning.
“Wales work really, really hard,” Murray added. “Their seven made 34 tackles in the Ireland game himself, and I think two of the players in the Wales team – a centre and the back-row – made more tackles between them than the Ireland team had made in total, so that just shows you what they’re like as a team, they’re a real hard-working team.”
Scotland U20s (versus Wales U20s at Hive Stadium on Friday 7.15pm – live on BBC iPlayer): J Brown; N Moncrieff, A Hunter, K Yule, F Watson; M Urwin, N Cowan; O McKenna, J Roberts, O Blyth-Lafferty, C Moss, D Halkon, O Duncan, F Douglas ©, R Logan. Subs: S Stephen, J Shearer, J Stewart, B Godsell, M Fyffe, H McArthur,I Coates, C van Wyk..
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