England U20s recorded a 35-8 victory over the Junior Springboks at Coventry's Butts Park Arena on Friday evening.

London Irish Academy player Izaiha Moore-Aiono made his mark on the contest by skipping over for the final try of the game. Ben Atkins also made an appearance off the bench.

Steve Bates' side scored five tries in an attritional contest, with the fixture serving as a final opportunity for players to earn selection for next month's World Rugby U20 Championships in Argentina. 

England now head to Argentina for the World Rugby U20 Championships where they have been drawn in Pool B and will face Ireland (4 June), Italy (8 June) and Australia (12 June) before the knockout stages.

They are led by England U20s head coach Bates, who is assisted by Mark Hopley (forwards), James Scaysbrook (defence) and Richard Whiffin (attack) who joined for the season as part of the coach development programme agreement with Premiership Rugby.

Steve Bates said: "I was really pleased with some areas of our game, we scrummaged well and we took our opportunities.

"There wasn’t quite as much continuity as we would like, we’ve been working on that all week but we created three or four other scoring opportunities tonight that we didn’t take and that would have given the score a completely different complexion. Overall though, it’s progress from the Six Nations and a step in the right direction.

"The good thing about playing another fixture is that we’ve had a really good week’s training which has brought the squad a lot closer together and I think that is really beneficial. It’s always good to win against a southern hemisphere nation as we did tonight but we cannot read too much into it but generally I think it was a good performance."

 

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