Sam Vesty: 'Massive frustration... moving it makes a lot of sense'

Northampton Saints head coach Sam Vesty has thrown his weight behind Pat Lam’s call for the Under-20 Six Nations Championship to be moved to stop clashes with the PREM Rugby Cup.

Bristol Bears boss Lam told RugbyPass last week that he would like to see age-group competitions moved to another part of the season so that clubs can use their top youngsters in the competition.

Saints travel to Exeter Chiefs this weekend without James Pater, Oliver Scola, Aiden Ainsworth-Cave, Sonny Tonga’uiha and Jonny Weimann, who are all involved in England’s Under-20s clash with Italy.

And Vesty admits that Saints would have liked to have had them available for a competition where the main objective should be to integrate youngsters into the first team at a time when they have senior players away on international duty.

“It stretches your squad and stresses your squad, obviously, having internationals away. So the competition wants to be about opportunity and young guys coming through to be the next generation of PREM and international stars.

“And then at the same time as that, the England 20s, obviously, are playing the Six Nations, which is a massive frustration because we’ve got two of the four England 20s props playing for England, and they can’t play for us.

“Therefore, it’s stress on your squad. We have a competition that should be all about the youth and all that, and it’s at the same time as the best kids are away.

“Moving it makes a lot of sense. I think it doesn’t really matter where you move it to, as long as it’s not in the PREM Rugby Cup window. You can do it at the same time as the women’s Six Nations.

“The biggest obstacle in the way of English under-20s players developing is game time. If you put the two competitions that they can actually play in at the same time, you’re automatically losing five games they could have played.

“But it’s not the fault of the RFU and Premier Rugby, you know, they obviously can’t just move it on their own. They need everyone else to back it as well. But it makes a lot of sense,” he said.