WALES coach Jason Strange is determined to take the positives from his side’s agonising pool stage defeat by New Zealand into Monday’s rematch at the Manchester City Academy Stadium.

As it turned out, the Kiwis’ 18-17 win on Wednesday, which came courtesy of a last-ditch penalty, was not enough to send the Baby Blacks into the World Rugby U20 Championship semi-finals.

South Africa’s bonus-point victory over France saw them progress to the last four as the best of the runners-up across the three groups.

It all means that five days after being denied a famous triumph, Wales will now get another chance to do what they couldn’t quite manage in midweek and beat the reigning champions.

The sides meet for the right to play either Scotland or Australia in the play-off for fifth place.

Playing matches to determine the minor positions is, for some, a largely pointless exercise, but Strange sees it as a great opportunity for Wales to again test themselves against a top team.

“Even though we were all bitterly disappointed to lose, the performance was excellent for the most part and we have already taken a lot of positives from it,” he said.

“The players were excellent, not only technically and tactically, but the togetherness they relied on so much in the Grand Slam campaign was back which was good to see.

“We started really well going 11-0 up. We let them off at times and the difference was in the way we dealt with a few critical decisions but we’ve already learned from those mistakes and hopefully on Monday some of those decisions will go in our favour and we’ll get the right result.

“Defensively we were superb and a number of players really took their performance up a level such as Dan Jones, Dillon Jones, Tom Phillips and Harrison Keddie.”

He continued: “The key thing is that we are developing players and we’re excited to have a second Test now against New Zealand, a chance to have another crack at getting an historic result.

“It was a physical, high tempo game (on Wednesday) – the ball in play time went from 22 minutes against Georgia to 37 minutes which is where we want to be.

“We have an extra day’s rest now before preparing in earnest for Monday.”

The game kicks off at 3.15pm with Ireland taking on Argentina (5.30pm) and England playing South Africa (7.45pm) later in the day for the chance to reach the championship final.