Ireland U20s to wear black armbands in memory of Irish teenagers who died in Greece

Both teens recently graduated from St Michael’s College in south Dublin, and were believed to have been known to several members of the Ireland U20s squad currently playing in South Africa.

Mon, 03 Jul, 2023 - 15:17

Simon Lewis

Ireland Under-20s will wear black armbands for their final World Rugby U20 Championship pool match against Fiji on Tuesday as a mark of respect to the two teenagers who died on holiday in Greece at the weekend.

Andrew O’Donnell and Max Wall, both 18, had been on a trip with school friends to the Greek island of Ios last week. Andrew went missing on Friday and following an intensive search, his remains were found near a cliff on the island on Sunday. It is understood he may have fallen. On the same day, Max fell ill near the port area of the island and was rushed to hospital where he passed away.

Both had recently graduated from St Michael’s College in south Dublin, and were believed to have been known to several members of the Ireland U20s squad currently playing in South Africa.

Ireland made a request to tournament organisers World Rugby for their players to wear black armbands for Tuesday’s game against Fiji in Stellenbosch and permission was granted on Monday ahead of their 12:30pm Irish time kick at Danie Craven Stadium.

Head coach Richie Murphy made a statement on behalf of the squad ahead of a pre-match media conference and said: “It’s a really tough time. Obviously, we are massively devastated to hear of the passing of Max Wall and Andrew O’Donnell, two boys from St Michael’s.

“We have a number St Michael’s guys here in the squad, who know them well, and as a father of kids around that age and an Irishman I feel really devastated for them and we’d like to offer our condolences to the Wall and O’Donnell family.”

Turning to the game ahead, which reigning Six Nations champions Ireland must win to progress to the semi-finals, Murphy has been forced to make a further change to the side he selected before last weekend following a training injury to named full-back Harry West.

West has been replaced by regular full-back Henry McErlean, whose place on the bench as an outside backs replacement is taken by Hugh Gavin.

Murphy has called up Shannon and Munster wing Josh Costello, who flew out of Ireland on Monday, to replace West in the squad and there will be multiple changes to the side which defeated Australia in round two to keep hopes alive of reaching the last four following an opening-round draw with England.

“It’s a case of needs must,” Murphy said. “We’ve been playing pretty tough fixtures over a five-day turnaround on a very, very heavy pitch.

“So we’re in a position where we felt we needed to rotate the squad. We’ve brought 30 players that we were confident were able to fit into our team and where able to play the game at the level we needed to play it.

“Our focus was very much to make quite a number of changes in this round and in order to, one, we obviously have to win the game but if we win the game we know that we’re getting into a semi-final and that’s very much the focus.” .

IRELAND U20 (v Fiji): H McErlean (Leinster); J Nicholson (Leinster), S Berman (Leinster), J Devine (Connacht), A Osborne (Leinster); M Lynch (Leinster), O Cawley (Leinster); G Hadden (Leinster), D Sheahan (Munster), F Barrett (Connacht), E O'Connell (Munster), J Hopes (Ulster); D Mangan (Leinster) – captain, D Barron (Leinster), B Gleeson (Munster).

Replacements: M Clein (Munster), G Morris (Leinster), R Foxe (Leinster), C Irvine (Ulster), G McCarthy (Leinster), J Oliver (Munster), S Prendergast (Leinster), H Gavin (Connacht).