Harry Leonard confident team can thrive in Cape Town after poor Six Nations

There is a good story about the rotund prop Victor Ubogu who, on tour to South Africa with Jack Rowell’s England squad, was being lapped by his team-mates as they warmed up by running around the pitch. “The altitude’s killing me!” gasped the overweight prop.

“We’re in bloody Cape Town!” was Rowell’s acidic response.

The Under-20 World Championships are being held early next month in and around Cape Town so Harry Leonard can’t rely on Ubogu’s get-out, although the Scotland skipper insists that he is not the sort to search for excuses. The age-grade squad flew out of Edinburgh last Friday, the same day some of the senior side departed for Australia.

Leonard made quite a splash at Edinburgh this season with four league starts for the club in addition to the five times he came off the bench. Moreover, the young stand-off started the first two Heineken Cup matches and, if he subsequently gave way to club captain Greig Laidlaw, it was more than he could have expected at the start of the season.

As ever, Leonard’s squad, coached by the redoubtable Peter Wright, will find themselves up against it in South Africa with five matches in 19 days, the first three coming against Australia, France and Argentina. The boys have been bashing the sand dunes at Gullane in East Lothian and that will be followed by a one-week training camp in Stellenbosch, which should have them in prime condition for their first game on 4 June against the young Wallabies – just one day before the two nations meet at Test level in Newcastle in New South Wales.

It looks a daunting task but Leonard is nothing if not a can-do character and he insists that the Scots’ single victory in the U20 Six Nations, with the last play of the game against Italy, is no guide to this competition. Instead he takes comfort from his team’s narrow loss to France and he insists they can go one better this time round. “In the French game we got an interception and were going for the French line when we were called back for a penalty at the previous breakdown. They kicked the three points which put them a score ahead but it was a game we could easily have won and we will target the French in South Africa.

“We have a strong squad and I’m not one to make any excuses for poor results. We know that we would have done better in the Six Nations but for our own mistakes and the boys are determined to right a few wrongs.”

The squad is missing the giant figure of Jonny Gray, Richie’s “little” brother – if that epithet is appropriate for someone tipping the scales at more than 17 stones – who is on the Macphail scholarship in New Zealand. At just 18 years old Gray will get another chance but he is not the only player who will be back. The strapping winger James Farndale is big, strong, quick and young enough to turn out for the U20s next season. Leonard insists that the strength of this squad lies in an exciting back division, which is good to hear given Scotland’s current try-scoring record.

“The strength is definitely in the back three, where guys like Michael Crawley, Mark Bennett and James Farndale are exciting runners. We are not in the slightest overawed by the challenge ahead. If you go in with a negative attitude then you are likely to get a negative result,” says Leonard with impeccable logic.

“We are a confident, strong squad that is determined to get good results and turn a few heads.”

One win in the opening three fixtures would do that.