Scotland bid to secure a place in the middle tier, contesting places 5-8, for the final two rounds of the IRB World Junior Championship when they face Samoa at the Stade Pascal Laporte in Nantes in the final match of Pool C tonight.
To achieve their goal, they must score four of more tries against Samoa and, even then, a place in the middle group would be dependent on France losing to South Africa without gaining a bonus point. The teams are ranked 1-12 after the completion of tonight's group games and Scotland will be bidding to gain a place in the middle group for the first time since the event switched from under-21 to under-20.
"Over the past two years, we've not won a pool match," said Sean Lineen, Scotland's under-20 coach. "It's a massive carrot for the boys. We let ourselves down against Argentina, but we bounced back against Wales and had a real chance to win that game. We missed three penalty kicks, which proved costly, but the bonus point we achieved could be important.
"I believe we have it in us to win against Samoa, although they looked much better against Argentina. They are very physical and you have to take them on; you can't lie off them. I remember from my own experience in the 1991 World Cup; we played them at their own game and won," recalled Lineen. "The set-piece will be very important, as will playing the game in the right areas. The Samoans are very good when the game is unstructured."
TEAM. Scotland U20 (v Samoa U20, Stade Pascal Laporte, Nantes) J Kilmartin; J Farndale, C Auld, R Fergusson, D Hoyland; T Allan, A Price; J Malcolm, R Anderson, D Rae, E Masterson, J Gray (capt), T Spinks, A Henderson, A Ashe. Substitutes: C Black, J Bhatti, P Cringle, R Leishman, W Bordill, S Steele, B Cooper, R Hughes
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article