RUGBY:WHEN MIKE Ruddock came out of the Ireland under-20 dressingroom on Tuesday night after his side went down 42-26 to South Africa, his first comment was about what had happened his native Wales.

“Did you hear what New Zealand did to them? Good Lord, they beat them 94-0,” said Ruddock.

It wasn’t just he felt sorry for his native land, it was as much a realisation that the top three teams in this Junior World Championship are capable of doing that to a lot of teams if they get momentum.

A stuttering England side, the Six Nations grand slam winners, have 10 points in the bag after beating Ireland and Scotland but they are still a long way off what New Zealand, Australia and South Africa have shown in this tournament in Italy.

There were times on Tuesday night when the Baby Boks looked like they would a run a huge score against Ireland but in the end had to settle for a five tries to two win.

And at the back of it all Ruddock knows it could and should have been closer, like the way England should have been put to the sword on Friday night.

“It is very frustrating. We have taken on two of the top tier nations now and we have been very competitive and when we look at the video after each game we think if only we’ve done things better we possibly could have gotten the victories.

“Against England we knocked on early on to give them a try and against South Africa our lineout really didn’t function and that meant we had to do a lot of tackling because of their counter-attacking,” said Ruddock.

“In the first half we went back to some bad old habits where our spacings were incorrect and there were gaps for them to run at. The boys got a bit of a drilling at half-time over it because I was unhappy with that, but second half we defended strongly for most of the half and all South Africa had to show for it was a three-point snap drop goal.

“And just towards the end when we got tired they managed to find a few gaps. And if you go back to why were we tired, well obviously we had two games in four days and we had to work twice as hard because we missed kicks to touch which would have allowed us to get organised. We are kind of beating ourselves a bit,” he added.

Ruddock now faces the difficult task of getting his side in shape for a third game in eight days, against an improving Scottish but, thankfully, Ireland did not pick up any injuries for the second game running despite the intensity of the exchanges in the scorching heat.

“This is a World Cup and I think Scotland have gotten better as the tournament has gone on. I saw quite a bit of their second half against England and they look very good. They are sharp, they have got plenty of pace and they offload very well. They’ll be quite a dangerous team.

“We are going to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and take the positive out of it. I know they are clichés but we have to look at the areas which need to rectify, for example get our lineout back on track, get our kicking out of the 22 off the park so they cannot counterattack against us as often as South Africa did.”