The 2021 U20 Six Nations were delayed until June 2021 due to the COVID pandemic. It was played on a shortened turnaround format with all teams playing their matches at Cardiff Arms Park over five rounds with 6 days between each round.

Historically, the reduced turnaround time format has been one that Ireland have struggled with, at tournaments such as the World Rugby U20 Championship, so, despite Ireland going into the competition as defending Six Nations Champions, our expectations were reduced.

In fact, they did slightly better than I expected. My expectations were they would lose the last three games but despite losing to, “The Big Two” , England and France, they did find enough in reserve to overcome a resurgent Italy and finish in third place after beating Scotland and Wales in the opening two rounds.

Results

Sat 19 Jun	Scotland	7	–	38	Ireland
Fri 25 Jun	Wales	12	–	40	Ireland
Thu 1 Jul	Ireland	15	–	24	England
Wed 7 Jul	Italy	23	–	30	Ireland
Tue 13 Jul	Ireland	28	–	34	France

Final Standings

TEAM	PL	W	PD	BP	PTS
England	5	5	96	5	25
France	5	4	33	3	19
Ireland	5	3	51	4	16
Wales	5	2	-62	1	9
Italy	5	1	4	3	7
Scotland	5	0	-122	0	0

Players Used

Ireland’s Head Coach Richie Murphy used 33 players throughout the tournament. We’ve put some of the key statistics in the sharable web story below but for more details you can read on below the story.

Ulster representation of 10 players and 32.1% of minutes played is up from the 2020 season’s previous high of 7 players and 26.5% minutes played, however, only three games were played in 2020. Both years were generally a higher representation for Ulster than normal. With very little rugby played over the last 18 months it’s hard to say if it’s the start or end of an upward trend.

It was also an untypically high representation for Connacht and an untypically low representation for Munster, though Munster certainly brought the quality in captain Alex Kendellen who had a monster tournament.

The minutes played, and games they started, for all the players used are shown below.

PLAYER	PRO	GAMES	MINUTES
Jamie Osborne	LEI	5	400
Harry Sheridan	ULS	5	396
Alex Kendellen	MUN	5	378
Cathal Forde	CON	5	360
Alex Soroka	LEI	5	355
Ben Moxham	ULS	5	354
Nathan Doak	ULS	4	307
Ronan Loughnane	LEI	5	306
Sam Illo	LEI	5	294
Shane Jennings	CON	4	286
Oisín McCormack	CON	4	228
Mark Morrissey	LEI	4	222
Jude Postlethwaite	ULS	4	201
Donnacha Byrne	CON	4	190
Tim Corkery	LEI	3	175
Chris Cosgrave	LEI	4	152
Ben Carson	ULS	4	143
Reuban Crothers	ULS	4	140
Jack Boyle	LEI	4	137
George Saunderson	ULS	3	135
Conor McKee	ULS	3	134
Temi Lasisi	LEI	3	126
Mark Donnelly	MUN	3	108
Eoin de Buitléar	CON	5	105
Daniel Okeke	MUN	3	86
Chay Mullins	IQR	1	80
James Humphreys	ULS	2	69
Josh O’Connor	LEI	1	55
Conor Rankin	ULS	2	47
Will Reilly	LEI	1	18
Jack Kelleher	MUN	1	11
Fearghail O’Donoghue	MUN	1	5
Liam Bishop	IQR	1	2

Scorers

Ireland scored 151 points over the tournament with the points coming from 20 tries, including a penalty try, 12 conversions, including a penalty try conversion and 9 penalties. The conversion rate for try conversions kicked was 57.9% which would be on the low side.

Nathan Doak was the main kicker and he accumulated 48 points but the main shout out goes to Kendellen who picked up 6 tries for 30 points.

PLAYER	TRY	CON	PEN	PTS
Nathan Doak	1	8	9	48
Alex Kendellen	6	0	0	30
Jamie Osborne	2	0	0	10
Alex Soroka	2	0	0	10
Eoin de Buitléar	2	0	0	10
Penalty Try	1	1	0	7
Cathal Forde	1	0	0	5
Sam Illo	1	0	0	5
Shane Jennings	1	0	0	5
Chris Cosgrave	1	0	0	5
George Saunderson	1	0	0	5
Daniel Okeke	1	0	0	5
Tim Corkery	0	2	0	4
James Humphreys	0	1	0	2
TOTAL	20	12	9	151

Meters and Carries

We have combined meters made and carries to show meters per carry. Meters made is still the most important with number of carries showing the amount of work done and in both cases Kendellen comes out on top.

Meters per carry is largely influenced by position played and the two wingers, Shane Jennings and Ben Moxham both covered the most ground per carry, it’s a pity Ireland’s style of play didn’t get them involved more often.

PLAYER	METERS	CARRIES	METERS / CARRY
Alex Kendellen	426	93	4.6
Cathal Forde	419	50	8.4
Jamie Osborne	331	42	7.9
Harry Sheridan	230	47	4.9
Shane Jennings	225	22	10.2
Nathan Doak	195	28	7.0
Ben Moxham	172	14	12.3
Oisín McCormack	141	22	6.4
Ronan Loughnane	126	28	4.5
Jude Postlethwaite	119	18	6.6
Alex Soroka	106	22	4.8
Sam Illo	103	25	4.1

Tackle Success

Ireland attempted 680 tackles competing 595 and missing 85 for an average tackle success of 87%. It was another area where Kendellen excelled with a 91% success rate for the 68 tackles he attempted.

Also of note are Harry Sheridan‘s efforts with the Ulster player coming in 2nd in tackles and 4th in carries despite playing out of position in the second row.

PLAYER	TACKLES MADE	TACKLES MISSED	TACKLE SUCCESS
Alex Kendellen	62	6	91%
Harry Sheridan	48	5	91%
Cathal Forde	46	7	87%
Oisín McCormack	40	3	93%
Ronan Loughnane	35	3	92%
Sam Illo	33	2	94%
Alex Soroka	27	9	75%
Shane Jennings	23	9	72%
Eoin de Buitléar	22	0	100%
Reuban Crothers	21	3	88%
Jude Postlethwaite	20	1	95%
Nathan Doak	20	2	91%

Errors

We’ve devised an Oops Index to take account of some of the errors that they collect stats for. We are scoring the Oops Index as 2 points for a Turnover Conceded, 1 point for a Handling Error, 3 points for a Penalty Conceded and 5 points for a Yellow Card.

Note that it’s not necessarily a bad thing to be at the top of the Oops Index as generally the more involved a player is in the game the more mistakes are likely to occur, as can be seen by the quality of the players shown below.

PLAYER	TURNOVER CONCEDED	HANDLING ERROR	PENALTY CONCEDED	YELLOW CARD	OOPS INDEX
Alex Kendellen	5	5	8	0	39
Nathan Doak	4	13	5	0	36
Chris Cosgrave	4	4	3	1	26
Jamie Osborne	7	8	1	0	25
Alex Soroka	2	3	4	0	19
Tim Corkery	1	5	4	0	19
Cathal Forde	3	3	3	0	18
Jude Postlethwaite	0	2	3	1	16
Shane Jennings	3	2	1	1	16
Ronan Loughnane	2	2	3	0	15
Oisín McCormack	2	1	3	0	14
Conor McKee	4	5	0	0	13

Ulster Contribution

Another new stat we’ll be looking at going forward is the Ulster Contribution which is a measure of the Ulster’s players’ actual stats compared to the expected statistics based on the percentage minutes played. For example if the were 100 tackles in a match and Ulster players accounted for 30% of the playing time we would expect Ulster players to complete 30 tackles. If they completed more than 30 they get a positive variance and if they completed less they get a negative variance.

Ulster did do better than average for points scored, thanks largely to Doak having the main kicking duties, but they were down on tries, meters made, carries and tackles. However, given that 7 of the 10 Ulster players were in an underutilised backline this is perhaps understandable.

Player of the Tournament

It’s quite a straightforward one as Munster’s Alex Kendellen excelled in almost every aspect of his play. Ireland did use a style of play that would put a lot of responsibility on the No 8 and the inside center and neither Kendellen or Cathal Forde were found wanting.

I’ve had a few gripes, in my match reports, about getting the ball out wide more often and a bit more variety in the back line would have been nice but given the circumstances of a disrupted season and a short turnaround for Coach Murphy, following the unexpected departure of Kieran Campbell, a fairly simple game plan was probably the right call, especially given the qualities of Kendellen.