Wales Under 20 recorded their second win of the tournament on Sunday, beating Scotland 26-21 to follow their opening 42-3 victory over Samoa but Dixon says the squad is now firmly focussed on Thursday’s Pool decider against Argentina.
“We have two wins out of two so we’re on the right track,” said Dixon who also played in last year’s Junior World Championship, including the win over New Zealand.
“But we know we are going to have to fight to win the Argentina game. They are a big side we are going to have to concentrate on the task ahead over the next few days.
“Our attack was spot on against Samoa, the game plan worked really well, and then our defence won us the game against Scotland. All credit to Scotland, they got stuck in and gave us a wake-up call because it was such a close run thing in the end. We have areas to work on now, some wrongs to put right and that’s what we’ll focus on now ahead of the next challenge.
“We are busting to get to the semi-finals so we’ll certainly go into the game all guns blazing. We have a number of players who were involved last year so that experience should help and we have a lot of leaders in our team, along with Ellis Jenkins who is a great captain.
“Argentina were a good team last year and we’ve done some work on them already so we are adjusting our game plan accordingly.
“We have a couple of days now to work hard in training and we are confident in our ability. We have pace in the backline and athletic forwards who like to throw the ball too but we have to play in the right areas against Argentina or they’ll punish us.”
Scarlets flanker Dan Thomas emphasised the need to be more clinical against Argentina. “We made a good start against Samoa scoring some good tries but we came unstuck a bit in the second half against Scotland and it was a nail-biting affair in the end. The boys dug in to grind out the win but we will have to cut out the errors and the high penalty count if we are to beat Argentina as they will penalise us heavily.
“Argentina is clearly going to be our hardest game yet in the competition. We played them last year and beat them in the third place play-off but they only have about four players remaining from that side. We have watched them in this tournament and they like to play an open game and have some strong, physical forwards.
“Our primary target is to reach the semi-finals. Our attack was excellent against Samoa and our defence won us the game against Scotland but we need to bring the two together on Thursday.”
