Wood: The Way We’ve Built Through The Tournament Has Been Incredible

Tom Wood was happy that the Ireland Under-20s showed ‘real grit and determination’ to put almost 50 points on Scotland, despite the result not being enough for them to be crowned U-20 Men’s Six Nations champions.

Wood was central to the Ireland U-20s’ 47-14 final round win over Scotland, delivering a player-of-the-match performance from out-half which included six well-struck conversions, a try assist, 12 carries for 79 metres, five tackles, four offloads, and six defenders beaten.

The tries were shared out between Duinn Maguire, Derry Moloney, Rob Carney, Ben Blaney, Christopher Barrett, and replacements Johnny O’Sullivan and Christian Foley, as Ireland won their first Triple Crown at U-20 level since 2023, finishing second overall.

Andrew Browne’s young side had hoped that they might do enough to overhaul France at the top of the table, but armed with a significantly superior scoring difference, les Bleuets duly secured an impressive Grand Slam thanks to a hard-earned 31-28 defeat of England in La Rochelle.

Speaking after Ireland’s last outing of the Championship at Virgin Media Park, Wood said: “I suppose we wanted to put ourselves in a position to go out and win the Six Nations, depending obviously on the result tonight (between France and England).

“Listen, we let a few in at the end, but I thought we showed real grit and determination to put a big score on Scotland, and they were a good side. So I’m pretty happy.”

Conceding back-to-back tries to Scotland’s Jamie McAughtrie and Henry Widdowson, on the 70-minute mark, saw Ireland’s lead cut to 35-14, but they finished strongly with two more scores from Barrett – his fifth of the tournament – and Young Munster prop Foley.

Wood and Moloney were part of the squad that finished bottom in last year’s U-20 Six Nations, and there were a lot of lessons learned from that difficult campaign. The class of 2026 also endured a tough start, losing 50-21 to France in Perpignan before building momentum through the rounds.

Orchestrating things from half-back have been Wood and Barrett, scoring 67 points between them with Barrett finishing as the U-20 Six Nations’ joint-top try scorer alongside Italy’s Valerio Pelli. For the Munster-capped Wood, he has really enjoyed helping the squad to grow over the last six weeks.

“We didn’t have the greatest start (against France), but I thought we always believed in what we had. Yeah, we got unlucky, France were much better on the day.

“But I think the way we’ve built since that game has just been incredible, and we really got behind each other after it. We knew we could do better, so yeah, I’m really happy with how we went on.

“I love it, we all love playing with this team. It’s such a great group of lads. We love coming down to camp, we love spending the week together.

“We’re real close with our coaches. It’s as good an environment as you want to be in. Honestly, it’s the most enjoyable part of rugby at the minute.”

It has been a memorable couple of months for the promising number 10, who is the youngest son of former Ireland hooker and captain Keith Wood. As well as being ever-present during the Six Nations run, Tom won his first two Munster senior caps either side of his 20th birthday last month.

A ‘prodigious talent with a great left boot’ according to Munster head coach Clayton McMillan, he has shown how accurate he can be when kicking from the tee and out of hand. He finished with the second highest goal-kicking success rate in the U-20 Six Nations – 80% from 20 successful kicks out of 25.

Wood will be itching for more opportunities in the red jersey of Munster before the Ireland U-20 group regathers in preparation for this summer’s expanded 16-team World Rugby Junior World Championship in Georgia.

He believes they can make further improvements to their game for what will be a challenging pool phase, beginning with a rematch with England in Tbilisi on Saturday, June 27. They will also lock horns with Argentina, last year’s bronze medallists, and the USA, one of the four promoted teams.

“100%, there is more to come. We’ve got such good depth in our team, we’ve got such good players. I think if we really gel together in the next few months, in various camps, then listen, there’s nothing we can’t do, I don’t think,” he added.

Meanwhile, Sami Bishti was beaming with pride after captaining the Ireland U-20s to their third Triple Crown in five years. He has followed in the footsteps of Reuben Crothers and Gus McCarthy, who led their respective 2022 and 2023 sides to clean sweeps of the home nations as part of Grand Slam wins.

It is almost a year to the day since Bishti captained Blackrock College to Leinster Schools Senior Cup glory against Terenure College. Browne said it was a ‘no brainer’ to give the former hammer thrower the captaincy role for Ireland given his numerous leadership qualities.

They were evident across the Six Nations, especially when Browne’s charges had to pick themselves up after that heavy beating at the hands of France. The tighthead prop speaks very well in the team environment and during his media duties, backing up what he produces on the pitch.

Bishti was part of a strong Irish scrummaging display against Scotland, going 9-0 on their own feed and winning a penalty. The UCD clubman maintained a high work-rate around the field with his impact at rucks and in the contact area.

Giving his reaction to the Triple Crown triumph afterwards, he said: “It’s absolutely incredible. It’s so cool, especially for the senior team to do it yesterday and we were obviously truly inspired by them.

“And then for us to come out today and do it, it’s a credit to all the hard work we’ve put in throughout the tournament. From where we came from in the first game to now, it’s definitely the ending we would have taken.

“It’s the belief. Brownie would have spoken about it constantly, like you have to be able to park those things. Obviously that result (against France) didn’t go our way, but we knew if we kind of threw the toys out of the pram, it would only infest itself more within the team.

“We had to park it, get rid of it, focus on our job, and we knew we could be the team that we wanted to be.”