Baby Boks French-fried again

The South African U20s conceded their second defeat on their two week tour to France after going down 13-3 to a French Selection XV in Paris on Tuesday evening.

Blue Bulls U21 flyhalf JC Roos scored the first points of the game by kicking a penalty goal.

But the French Selection XV managed a 10-3 halftime lead after centre Lamoulie Mathieu scored the only try of the game, goaled the conversion and then kicked a penalty.

The Baby Boks failed to add any points in the second half, while Lamoulie added another penalty to stretch the hosts’ lead to 13-3.

"It’s our second defeat on tour and once again, we are not going to make any excuses for the result," said SA U20 coach Eric Sauls.

"We let ourselves down with too many handling errors which were a result of players being overeager to impress. We are also still conceding many penalties at the breakdown, but this, I am sure, is something that we’ll get right before the IRB Junior World Championship.

"I am however pleased that we were once again solid on defence and our set piece play from the scrums and line-outs has improved. We started this game with 14 new faces and I was happy to see that our guys are starting to understand our systems."

The Baby Boks play their third and final match of the tour against a French Invitational XV in Toulouse on February 13.

Scorers:

France Selection XV:

Try: Lamoulie Mathieu
Con: Lamoulie
Pen: Lamoulie 2

SA U20:

Pen: JC Roos

Teams:

French Selection XV: Benoit Sicart (Montpellie), Lucas Dupont (Grenoble), Benjamin Petrie (Agen), Mathieu Lamoulie (Agen), Jean-Marc Buttin (Clermont Auvergne), Jules Plisson (Stade Français), Jérémy Gondrand (Bourgoin), Hugues Briatte (Stade Français), Gilles Roulin (Clermont Auvergne, captain), Joachim Beaumont (Arras), Baptiste Gay (Toulouse), Sébastien Mazet (CS Bourgoin-Jallieu), Sylvain Abadie (Agen), Thomas Larrieu (Dax), Xavier Chiocci (Toulon)
Replacements : Kevin Leguen (La Rochelle), Victor Paquet (Toulouse), Mohamed Boughanmi (Stade Français), Sullivan Guyon (Métro-Racing 92), Joachim Beaumont (Arras), Gaëtan Sauvage (Montpellier), Steeve Barry (La Rochelle), Hugo Bonneval (Stade Français), Laurent Magnaval (Toulon), Gilles Arnaudies (Perpignan)

SA U20: Clayton Blommetjies, Sampie Mastriet, Divan Ferguson, Francois Venter, Siburu Sithole, JC Roos, Louis Schreuder, CJ Stander (captain), Rinus Riekert, Lean Schwartz, Malugisi Bali, Peet Marais, Marcell van der Merwe, Monde Hadebe, Brummer Badenhorst.
Replacements: Francois du Toit, Regard Dreyer, Wessel du Rand, Helmuth Lehman, Frederick Muller, Jacobus Scheepers, Ruan Combrink, Andries Ferreira, Sabastian De Chaves