Under-18s savour win over England, but remain cautious

THE tremendous victory by Scotland U18s over their England counterparts in Leeds on Sunday has been praised as a major step forward by the SRU's player development chief, but Stevie Gemmell warned against the suggestion that Scotland had now caught up its rivals south of the border.

The young Scots, coached by Grant McKelvey, came from behind to defeat England in the first meeting where the home side fielded their full-strength side. In past meetings, England have used games with Scotland and other home nations to develop their second-string while the first-choice side played other matches in France. However, the under-18s system has been revamped and these games are now qualifiers for the U18s championships in Tarbes, France, in April, which leaves Scotland requiring victory over Ireland in Glasgow on Sunday to make sure of their place alongside France, England and Wales in the elite pool next month.

Gemmell said: "In isolation, this was a magnificent result and it shows the quality of players in this under-18 group at the moment. To stand toe-to-toe with an England team at any age group is great credit to the players and coaches there and, with England now fielding their strongest side against us, just underlines the achievement by the coaches and players. They were bigger than we were, but we were able to counter that by being very good technically, matching their intensity and making our one-on-one tackles so applying pressure to England that maybe they weren't used to or expecting. England were 14-0 up after eight minutes but our guys recovered from that and the most pleasing thing is that we didn't win a scrappy 3-0 affair in terrible weather, but won it by playing rugby and scoring tries, and that speaks volumes for the players and coaches.

"The big test for us all now is to try and maintain that so that when we meet England again at under-20s we repeat the feat."

After a whitewash in this year's under-20 championship, that is clearly the target and Gemmell was reluctant to take much credit for changes in the SRU's youth structures.

"We lost to Japan Schools 20-13 at Braidholm the previous weekend so we can't get too carried away," he added. "We have a talented group at under-18 level right now, but a lot of people in the SRU and across club and schools rugby have also been working very hard to improve the development of young players, trying to better prepare them for the international level, which means improving the balance of playing games and learning the game - it is no coincidence that a few boys on Sunday have been playing 1st XV rugby for clubs this season - while also improving skills and physicality.

Sunday showed that these boys are managing to get the balance right and that is a great confidence boost for them and us."

Scotland U18s face Ireland U18s, who lost to England, at Braidholm, Glasgow on Sunday, noon kick-off.