Relton starts against the Irish

By Mark Stevens
30/6/21

Exeter Chiefs winger Arthur Relton will be looking to help England Under-20s maintain their winning formula in this season's Six Nations Championship when they tackle Ireland tomorrow in Cardiff (8pm).

Relton, who has scored a tries in each of England's opening two games, lines-up in a starting XV, which shows four changes to that which beaten Scotland 31-12 last time out. win against Scotland last week.

Charlie Atkinson (full-back), Tom Litchfield (wing), Arthur Clark (second row) and Nahum Merigan (No.8) all make their first starts of this year’s competition, while there are also two positional changes, with Ewan Richards moving to blind-side flanker and Jack Clement completing the back row at openside. Jack van Poortvliet continues to captain the side from scrum half.

Looking ahead to the game England head coach Alan Dickens said: “I’ve been pleased with the squad’s preparation for this match. There were areas we knew we could improve on again from the Scotland game and so we’ve worked on that in training this week.

“A Six Nations campaign is very much a squad effort so we’ve made some changes across the match day 26 for this fixture. There’s a lot of competition among the group which is exactly what we want as the players drive each other to be better in every session.

“I was pleased with Charlie’s input off the bench last time out and we wanted to give him some more game time this week. We have a few positional changes too with players unavailable for selection due to injury or suspension.

“We will be coming up against a strong Ireland side who have also started with two wins to this year’s competition, so we know how tough a challenge it is going to be.

“Our performance has been building through the tournament and we’ve been improving with each game. I want to see that again when we take to the pitch on Thursday night.”

ENGLAND UNDER-20s SIDE TO FACE IRELAND UNDER-20s

15 Charlie Atkinson (Wasps)
14 Tom Litchfield (Northampton Saints)
13 Jack Bates (Bristol Bears)
12 Dan Lancaster (Leeds Tykes)
11 Arthur Relton (Exeter Chiefs)
10 Fin Smith (Worcester Warriors)
9 Jack van Poortvliet (Leicester Tigers, capt)
1 Phil Brantingham (Newcastle Falcons)
2 Sam Riley (Harlequins)
3 Harvey Kindell-Beaton (Saracens)
4 Arthur Clark (Gloucester Rugby)
5 Alex Groves (Bristol Bears)
6 Ewan Richards (Bath Rugby)
7 Jack Clement (Gloucester Rugby)
8 Nahum Merigan (Bath Rugby)

Replacements

16 Archie Vanes (Leicester Tigers)
17 Tarek Haffar (London Irish)
18 Luke Green (London Irish)
19 Freddie Thomas (Gloucester Rugby)
20 Ollie Stonham (Saracens)
21 Josh Gray (Gloucester Rugby)
22 Tom Carr-Smith (Bath Rugby)
23 Tommy Mathews (Hartpury University RFC)
24 Phil Cokanasiga (London Irish)
25 Tom Roebuck (Sale Sharks)
26 Orlando Bailey (Bath Rugby)