Preview: Junior World Cup Round Two
While most of the favourites performed at the standard they were expected to, when World Rugby's Junior World Cup heads into Round Two on Saturday there may just be a few surprises.
As was evident in the first half of South Africa's encounter with Japan, Scotland's win over Australia and Wales' loss to Ireland, upsets can and will happen at Under-20 level.
The title-holders New Zealand showed little signs of weakness, to no one's surprise, winning their opening game by a 55-point margin.
Not a scoreline that would surprise most people when the young Kiwis hold an especially high standard for having always reached the semifinals of this particular tournament.
England, the tournament's 2013 and 2014 winners, dispelled any thoughts of the squad carrying their poor Six Nations form into the Championship by recording a 48-10 win on their report card to take home to the fans.
Each Group's first place seed after Round One reflects the arrangement of last years final standings for the tournament, perhaps hinting that any poor performance by last year's top three before the tournament was not a sign of things to come.
Round Two's fixtures allow for a possible interesting twist in the standings of the respective groups as each team that bagged an opening-round victory with bonus points is set to face the team just below them, forcing a rigorous contest for first place.
A win with bonus points for New Zealand, South Africa, or England will more than likely see them qualify for the semifinals.
The third-place teams that have managed to claw a bonus point, Australia (or two in the case of Wales), will have a much simpler task qualifying for that fourth semifinal spot than their opening round friends who could not scrape bonus point.
This is because assuming each second seed team loses to the respective first seed team in the group in the Round Two fixture, followed by both the current second and third place teams winning their last game of the group stages, the current third-placed team will be a point ahead (with the exception of Ireland who has two bonus points).
For the teams that haven't picked up any points in their first match, Georgia, Italy, France, and Japan, predictions look much less in their favour. Assuming the current first seed team won Round Two's match, they would need to win their next two games with bonus points to have a possible chance at the semifinals.
Unofficial predictions aside, each team has the potential to turn a fixture on its head. New Zealand may well be next in line for the next upset.
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