A PEMBROKESHIRE rugby player retains his place in the Wales U20 squad for the second U20 Rugby World Championship match against Japan U20.

Archie Hughes, the 20-year-old scrum half from Tenby who recently signed a new deal with the Scarlets, featured in the narrow defeat in Wales’ opening match against New Zealand in Paarl on Saturday.

“The penalty count is something we have looked at," said scrum half Hughes.

"Conceding 16 against New Zealand was disappointing, and we know that in any Test match you need to keep the tally under 10 to have a chance of winning.

“Even so, it showed how much potential there is in this squad that we gave away 16 penalties, yet still got within two points of beating New Zealand. 

“Everything happens so quickly in this tournament, and we now have to go out and try to get those five points against Japan.” 

Wales U20 head coach Mark Jones has made just two changes for the game against Japan this afternoon, with Louis Fletcher coming into the starting line up in place of Ellis Fackrell, and second row Evan Hill gets his first start for the U20s.

Jones said: “We’ve identified some areas in our game we want to rectify which might have got us over the line, giving the boys the opportunity to fix up those areas.

“It’s a reward for the boys – we haven’t had many games, so we need to build some cohesion in the team, and we want to make the team difficult to get in to.

“Although it was a positive performance in lots of areas, we didn’t win. And it wasn’t as good a performance as we expected from ourselves.

"Looking at the score-line, had we performed to the level we expected we probably would have got over the line.

“We’re all about the performance and usually winning takes care of itself.

“We’ve spent a lot of our time fixing up our own game – we have looked at Japan, it’s clear their score-line against France isn’t flattering but it wasn’t very flattering when we played them [in the Six Nations].

"We’re certainly not taking them lightly but our focus is to improve as a group.

“In terms of the context of the tournament it is very important to try and get as many points as possible as we can.

"If we can get maximum points, then that would be terrific but first of all we have to win the game and that is not going to be easy.

“We’re going to have to start well and then maintain the intensity for the full 80 minutes. There were a couple of glitches in the last game and we got exposed so we need to ensure that doesn’t happen again.”

Wales U20 team to face Japan U20: 15 Cameron Winnett, 14 Llien Morgan, 13 Louie Hennessey, 12 Bryn Bradley, 11 Harry Houston, 10 Dan Edwards, 9 Archie Hughes, 1 Dylan Kelleher-Griffiths, 2 Lewis Lloyd, 3 Louis Fletcher, 4 Evan Hill, 5 Jonny Green, 6 Ryan Woodman (captain), 7 Lucas De La Rua, 8 Morgan Morse.

Replacements: 16 Sam Scarfe, 17 Josh Morse, 18 Kian Hire, 19 Mackenzie Martin, 20 Seb Driscoll, 21 Tom Florence, 22 Harry Wilde, 23 Harri Williams.

Kick off is 1pm (UK time) and the game can be seen on YouTube, BBC iPlayer and S4C.