The South Africans won four of their five matches at the three-week long tournament, with their only defeat coming in the semi-final last Wednesday evening in Calvisano against England.
New Zealand were crowned 2015 champions after their 21-16 victory over England on Saturday in Cremona. The Junior Boks outplayed France Under-20 by 31-18 to finish the tournament in third place.
The Junior Boks will thus be the third ranked team for the 2016 edition of the annual tournament, which will take place in Manchester.
Commenting on their last outing against France yesterday, head coach Dawie Theron said his team did well to recover from a difficult start to the match.
“The difficult start to the match can perhaps be attributed to some early nerves as a result of the previous result against England. We had a good warm-up session before kick-off but I could see there were some nerves out there especially in the early period.
“France scored twice during that time (a penalty and unconverted try), but I think we showed what we are capable of in the following 20 minutes. We scored four tries and they were well executed and text book copies of our plan,” said Theron.
