Ireland U20s set sights on 'best performance yet' against Scotland with title shot alive

While their own destiny is out of their hands, Ireland Under-20s task is simple: beat Scotland and sit back and hope France can deny England.

Richie Murphy's side's final game of the Six Nations championship is at 7pm on Friday night in Cork, with England’s clash with France in Pau not starting until an hour later after a late bid to synchronise the kick-offs fell through.

After four rounds the defending champions sit one point behind table-toppers England. The sides played out a thrilling 32-32 draw last weekend after both won their three previous matches.

"We can’t control what England and France are doing so we just need to concentrate on ourselves," said backs coach Ian Keatley after the team was named on Wednesday afternoon.

"We’ve kinda gradually got better through the tournament and we're just trying to get our best performance yet against a dogged Scottish side.

"They haven't won a match yet but they’ve been quite competitive. We’ve got to win the match first and then see what we can do to put points on the board because it might come down to that."

Ireland, who won Grand Slams in 2022 and 2023, are still in the mix thanks to a late converted try against England in The Rec last weekend.

"At the time we felt that we got out of jail, great resilience from the lads," added the former Munster and Ireland out-half.

"We played Leinster earlier on in the campaign and we came back. That was the messaging: we've done this before, believe, be brave and they did that.

"It was great to get the draw but when you review it, I think we had six or seven clean line breaks and we only finished half of them so there were so many opportunities left out there.

"We could have easily lost it but probably should have won it.

"That’s the way it is,