“There is no time to wallow,” says Hogg ahead of crucial match with Italy

Scotland head coach Carl Hogg insists “there is no time to wallow” after this week’s loss to Georgia and ahead of tomorrow’s crucial clash with Italy in the World under-20 Championship in Argentina.

The young Scots gave away a sloppy late try in Rosario on Wednesday to lose their final Pool C match to Georgia 17-12.

It came off the back of previous defeats to South Africa and New Zealand, meaning Scotland finished bottom of the pool and will now be battling to avoid relegation from the event during this coming week.

Next up in Rosario is Italy in the 9th-12th place semi-final tomorrow at 2.30pm UK time and Hogg said:  “There is no time to wallow, we have to raise our spirits and do the simple things well again.

“I was very disappointed with the Georgia performance, we didn’t perform anywhere near where we were in the first two games.

“We needed to play the game on our terms and play with multi-phase with ball in hand against a big set piece orientated side and we just weren’t able to execute, we lacked accuracy.

“We couldn’t retain the ball beyond two or three phases and we let Georgia into the contest.

“There were a number of instances in the game that really annoyed me. All we had to do after an attacking break at the end was hold onto the ball, go through the phases and break them down, but we were not able to play those multi phases.

“This was a pivotal fixture for us – we showed elements of good rugby in the first two games, but we didn’t get anywhere near that against Georgia.

“Since that game we have been scratching our heads as to why in our most pivotal game we had our poorest performance.”

Scotland v Italy takes place in the under-20 World Championship at 10.30am local time (2.30pm UK time) on Monday, June 17 – the match will be streamed live on world.rugby/u20

Thanks to World Rugby for the photo