Winters confident England Under-20s can make final

England Under-20 back Sam Winters says he is confident his side will progress to the final of the Junior World Championship by beating South Africa in their semi-final in Tbilisi.

The 19-year-old, who plays his club rugby at Bath, started the nail-biting 40-38 victory against Argentina last week which meant they made it through to the last four.

Andy Titterrell's side withstood late pressure from Los Pumitas and had to play a portion of the second half with 13 players after Elliot Williams and Will Knight were both sent to the sin-bin within the space of a couple of minutes.

Winters will start the semi-final once more on the wing and, if England beat South Africa, they will face either France or New Zealand in Saturday's final.

"We know they're a good side. Of course we respect them," Winters told BBC Radio Somerset before Monday's semi-final.

"But we're very much focused on ourselves. We're a very close-knit group and our way to beat teams is called out-teaming them.

"We just out-team teams, and that's [about] how close we can get together on the pitch.

"We certainly saw that in the last 10 minutes of the Argentina game. 13 men on the pitch, how much we were willing to fight for each other.

"If we show that against South Africa, we know we can have them. It's a pretty special group."

Winters added players such as Billy Vunipola, who appeared for England Under-20s before going on to earn 75 caps for the senior team, and Bath team-mate Kepu Tuipulotu, have helped provide him with the inspiration to earn full honours in the future.

"Something they have in the team rooms is an England flag with all the previous years capped back to when it started," Winters added.

"And on it you can see all the names of the players and if they've gone on to make England caps and England Lions caps.

"You can see from each year group there is a big handful of boys who have. Seeing that is quite inspirational and certainly keeps you in the mix. You sort of start thinking, why can't that be me in a few years time?

"It's pretty special. I've known Kepu [Tuipulotu] for a while. I went to the same school as Kepu so I've sort of seen him grow up.

"To have someone quite close to you go through the same pathway as you do, it's quite inspirational. It definitely makes you realise this can be done - and it can happen pretty soon."