A Carmarthenshire prop has his chance to get his foot in the door as he joins up with Wales U20 in South Africa for the U20 World Rugby Championship.

Tomas Pritchard, who was born in Llandybie, has been called up to the squad to replace Ellis Fackrell who is now out with a shoulder injury sustained in the narrow defeat in the opening round of the competition against New Zealand last week.

The 20-year-old who plies his trade with Cardiff Met has already arrived in Cape Town but will not feature in this afternoon’s (Thursday, June 29) fixture against Japan in Stallenbosch.

Tomas began his rugby career as a hooker when he joined Llandybie at the age of seven but switched to prop whilst at Coleg Sir Gar.

In 2022, he featured for Llandovery in the Welsh Premiership as well as Llangennech in Division One of the National Leagues and now plays for the University’s side in the Welsh Championship.

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.

Former Pontarddulais Comprehensive School pupil Kian Hire also comes in on the bench. Llandovery's Josh Morse and Harri Williams, whose dad is from Pontardawe, are also among the replacements. 

Former Ysgol Gyfun Ystalyfera pupil Morgan Morse and former Cwmtyrch juniors' Llien Morgan retain their places in the starting line up.

Mark 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 watched on YouTube, BBC iPlayer and S4C.