Wales U20s were beaten 47-27 by the Junior Springboks in the final of the U20 Six Nations Summer Series last night. But Hayward was extremely proud of the effort put in by his players who beat Scotland, Georgia, and Italy along the way, and insists many of this current squad will go on to make their mark at senior professional level.
“You’ll see a lot of players from this team come through and play for Wales, and be top class professional players,” said the Wales U20s head coach. “You look at Joe (Hawkins), and Daf Jenkins. I thought they were outstanding, and Mason Grady as well.
“They struggled to handle Mason when he had the ball we just struggled to put him into space often enough. You’ll see these boys on the senior international stage in the future. There’s no doubt about that.”
Despite coming up short against an extremely powerful South Africa U20s side Wales have improved dramatically in the space of four months. They endured a difficult U20s Six Nations campaign, but bounced back to make the final.
And Hayward insists they will be even more competitive next season. “They’ve had a lot of challenges this year especially going into the Six Nations off the back of zero rugby because of covid restrictions etc,” he said.
“That won’t be the case next year. We’ll certainly be in a different place next season. We’ll be better prepared. The main thing for boys at this age is that they are on the field playing rugby.
“I always say experience is the best teacher and unless you are playing rugby you can’t learn.” Hayward believes they can take a lot of learnings out of this season’s competition, but also admits they have a long way to go before they can start beating the likes of South Africa.
“We spoke at half-time about how we hadn’t fired any shots at all in the first-half,” he said. “We said when we come off the field in 40 minutes time lets make sure we’ve had a go and we’ve tried.
“We managed to put some points on the board which was pleasing but there’s obviously a lot to learn. South Africa are in the top two in the world, and we are quite a way off that at the moment.
“We’ve come a long way. The boys are in a much better physical condition, and we had a good training camp before we came.
“The boys played some real good rugby at times, and I think if we’d played any other team in the tournament we probably would have been on a level pegging with everyone else.”
