By Mally (09/04/03)
April 9 2003

Newcastle Falcons U19s Andrew Buist, David Wilson, William Kay and Andrew Skeen are all taking part in the Under 19 World Championship being held in France this week. Forwards Buist and Wilson are in the 25 man England Squad, hooker William Kay is representing Wales, and fly-half Andrew Skeen is the Scotland squad.

The IRB/FIRA-AER Under 19s World Championship starts today (April 9th) with the final on April 20th. The recent outbreak of SARS has had an impact on the tournament with the hosts France initally trying to block the attendence of both Hong Kong and Chinese Taipei. The Hong Kong team will be taking part in the championship but Chinese Taipei have since been replaced with Poland.

The tournament is split into two 16 strong pools, with seedings based on last year's results. In the opening match the top seeded nation New Zealand will take on the lowest and each team will play four matches in the first week.

Group A

1 New Zealand
2 France
3 South Africa
4 Argentina
5 Scotland
6 England
7 Wales
8 Italy
9 Ireland
10 Georgia
11 Russia
12 Romania
13 Japan
14 Korea
15 Canada
16 Namiba

Group B

1 Uruguay
2 Chile
3 Spain
4 USA
5 Tunisa
6 Portugal
7 Paraguay
8 Ukraine
9 Germany
10 Morocco
11 Poland
12 Lithuania
13 Belgium
14 Cote D'Ivoire
15 Czech Republic
16 Hong Kong

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IRB U19s Website

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