Ward ruled out of Junior Boks bronze medal match

23 June 2016 - 12:04 By Craig Ray

After a chastening thrashing in the Under-20 World Championship semi-final on Monday‚ the Junior Boks endured added insult with the news that captain Jeremy Ward has been suspended for two weeks. Ward was yellow-carded against England for a dangerous tackle on fullback Max Malins and has now earned a further sanction after being cited.He will miss Saturday’s bronze medal match against Argentina in Manchester. Coach Dawie Theron also called up Leopards flyhalf Benhard Janse van Rensburg to the squad as injury cover.Janse van Rensburg is set to join the team on Thursday after wing S’busiso Nkosi (thigh) and scrumhalf Embrose Papier (ankle) were forced to return to South Africa. With sufficient cover at wing and scrumhalf ahead of the bronze playoff match against Argentina at the AJ Bell Stadium‚ Theron opted to call up Janse van Rensburg.Theron will name his team to face Argentina on Friday. England meet Ireland in the final. Argentina defeated the Junior Springboks 19-13 in their second pool match in the tournament‚ and assistant coach Nazeem Adams said they were determined to make amends for that result on Saturday.“We are still hurting from the defeat against England‚” Adams said‚ after the 39-14 semi loss to the defending champions. “We realise that we let ourselves down on attack and defence. But that said‚ it was good to see the players fight back in the second half. That character is exactly what we need in the bronze playoff against Argentina.“We know it will be a challenging encounter against them‚ as we saw in our pool match‚ but we are determined to make up for our defeat against them. Our focus now is on a strong finish to the tournament‚ and we are determined to achieve that.” - TMG Digital..

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