An Under 20 national selection game will take place at Aberavon on Thursday evening (7.15pm) with the East taking on the West in a bid to impress Wales Under 20 head coach Phil Davies and his coaching team.
Players from the Blues and Dragons set-ups will form East Wales, with the Scarlets and Ospreys joining forces to make up the West. The four WRU Regional Performance Managers will coach the sides, with Gethin Watts (Blues) and Kevin George (Scarlets) acting as head coach for East and West respectively, assisted by Will Thomas (Dragons) and Andrew Millward (Ospreys).
Davies hopes this WRU National Academy initiative will provide a valuable platform from which to select the Wales Under 20 squad for the forthcoming Under 20 Six Nations Championship.
He said, “This is a concept we wanted to put into place in order to give the lads a level of keen competition against their peers to use as a selection tool for the Six Nations and Junior World Championship.
“The Regional Performance Managers and Regional academy staff have been heavily involved in the process to this stage in terms of the selection and coaching of the sides. We have also watched a great deal of Principality Premiership rugby, through the new video system now in place, and by going to a number of games. Other than Tavis Knoyle, Ashley Beck and Rhys Williams who are on regional Heineken Cup duty this week, our best available Under 20 players will be on display on Thursday.
“It will be very exciting to see a number of last year’s Under 20 squad players such as Kristian Phillips, James King, Matthew Jarvis and Rhys Downes forming combinations with and coming up against talented youngsters from last season’s Under 18 group such as Dale Ford, Tom Crandon and Dean Gunter, along with Dan Fish who has made waves for the Wanderers this season.
“It is an early opportunity to see the potential strength in depth of our squad for the forthcoming season. I want to see the standard of rugby these players are capable of, and look at a few combinations. We hope to be able to use this match, along with Premiership and Regional games to enable early identification of our squad in order to be well prepared for the international season. We will hold training sessions with an enlarged squad over the next couple of months before announcing our Six Nations squad before Christmas.
“The Under 20 programme we are putting into place will add value to the excellent work done within the Regions and provide players capable of shining at the 2011 and 2015 Rugby World Cups.”
East v West
Talbot Athletic Ground – Thursday 15 October, 7.15pm
Entry £3, concessions £2, Under 16s free of charge
The team line-ups will be announced will be announced tomorrow (Wednesday).
