After playing a key role in Wales U20s victory over Scotland on Friday night, young Osprey Joe Hawkins was delighted to get back to winning ways with the international team.
“Full credit to the boys, it’s always nice to bounce back with a win and it keeps us in the competition as well,” he said.
“It’s a privilege playing for the U20s but it’s credit to the boys really – the forwards fronted up which gave us backs a platform to play off so it was nice to get some tidy ball and look to create stuff.
“We’ve still got ambitions of going on and winning it [the championship] and even though we had a tough loss last week – one game doesn’t drop us out of contention.
“We’ve bounced back with a decent performance against Scotland but credit to the boys for applying themselves and putting the effort in post Ireland and coming away with a good win.”
Four second half tries overturned a 7-0 halftime deficit and saw Wales earn a 26-13 victory and with Italy upsetting England, the championship is no longer a forgone conclusion.
“This year there is a real level playing field,” explained Jenkins, “We didn’t show ourselves in a good light against Ireland but I still don’t think Ireland were 50 plus points better than us and we showed against Scotland that we can compete for 80 minutes as well.
“We pride ourselves on being a fit team and we knew come the last 10 minutes we’d really come through and I think that is where we can really build now going into the next game.”
With the forwards managing to get on top of their counterparts, fly half Jac Lloyd was able to keep the ball in front of the pack with some astute tactical kicking to pile on the pressure in the second half. As a result, Wales surged through like a red tide and Hawkins picked a sumptuous line to power over to add to Alex Mann’s earlier try.