Kenny Murray congratulated his team for the resolve they showed in the second half against England but was disappointed with areas of the overall performance in World Rugby U20 Championship opener. Image: World Rugby 
IT was a tough afternoon against the reigning champions in the sweltering heat of north Italy, but Scotland head coach Kenny Murray was in no mood for making excuses for his Scotland Under-20s side after they suffered a 56-19 defeat to England in the opening round of the World Rugby U20 Championship earlier this [Sunday] afternoon.
“The first 20 minutes we actually did well, scored a couple of good tries [but] you can see there’s just some soft tries, which was really frustrating,” said Murray. “The yellow card hurt us a little bit as well, and I thought we just defensively didn’t work hard enough. We didn’t get round the corner, allowed them to get us on the edges too easily, which really put us under pressure. So, [we’ve] got a bit of work to do with that.
“I thought in the second half, the boys worked really hard, [I’m] really proud that England had to work hard to get tries for the first 30 minutes of that period. A couple of kicks we should have dealt with a bit better, but I thought the boys showed a lot of resolve in the second half to keep them out.
World Rugby U20 Championship: Scotland outgunned by England in campaign opener
Skyscanner Pacific Tour: Alex Masibaka poised for emotional return to Fiji
Finn Russell shows his class as Lions atone for Argentina loss by thrashing Western Force
“We’ve understood we need to work hard in these conditions. I thought at we probably just let our feet off the gas a few times. In the first 20 minutes they got on with [playing in the heat], but I think they hit a bit of a wall after 20 minutes. You could see that visibly.
“It was just tough, but it’s tough for all the teams. It’s not just us, all the teams have got the same issues, so we just need to get on with it and perform as well as we can.
“I think the most important thing now is recovery,” he added. “Playing at half-past three [local time] is tough, and we have all our games at that time so that’s really tough for us. It’s about recovering well, we’ve got a plan, a strategy in place for that, and make sure we’re looking after the boys.
“Then we’ll look at our game over the next day or two, and get ready for Australia [in round two on Friday]. We focus a lot on ourselves, but we’ll look at Australia and see where their threats are before we go and play them.
“The key thing for us is just around small errors having big impacts on games at this level of rugby.We saw that today. A couple of defensive errors let them in for soft tries. A couple of not defusing a few kicks gave them two tries at the end as well.
Australia suffered an even heavier defeat in their opening match, going down 73-17 to South Africa, but Murray warned that the young Wallabies will seize the opportunity to turn their campaign around if Scotland don’t address the individual errors which he believes cost his team against England.
“There were definitely times in the pitch where we probably lost our connections,” he reflected. “A couple of times we flew out of line and allowed them to get soft line breaks. A couple of times I felt our collision wasn’t good enough and we didn’t slow them down. They’re getting really quick ball. When you’re not getting round the corner and they’re getting quick ball, it’s the worst possible outcome.
“With the nature of the tournament, you’re playing five games in 20 days, so you need to use your squad and that’s something we’ll be doing. We’ll see where we are injury-wise tonight and tomorrow, and then we’ll see what we’re looking at with the squad. Obviously, we’ve had a think about the squad already for Australia, so we know where that’s going to be, but we’ll take into account some injuries that were picked up today.
“[We’ve] just a couple of bumps. Hopefully nothing too serious. Ollie Duncan got a bang on his shoulder, so we’ll see how that is, and then just some cramps ,and Ollie Blyth-Lafferty got some stitches when he got an elbow in the eye. But hopefully nothing major.”
World Rugby U20 Championship: Scotland outgunned by England in campaign opener