Jonny Morris has admitted Scotland U20s need to improve mentally to put in an 80 minute performance against Ireland after a mixed Six Nations.

The Glasgow Warriors youngster – who was a travelling reserve for the game against Dragons last month – will be key for Scotland if they are to get anything in Cork on Friday night.

They’ve had times during the Six Nations where they have looked impressive but they’ve not managed to get a full match in, and there has been a lot of comparisons to the senior team who have also struggled to get a complete performance.

Morris believes that physically there are no issues for Kenny Murray’s men but he did confess that maybe they’ve switched off too many times and it has cost them.

Ireland scored 82 points when they last met at Scotstoun last year but Morris is certain that won’t have any say on Friday night’s match.

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Speaking after being named in the team to make the trip across the Irish Sea, he said: We’ve played two halves of rugby pretty much in every fixture, and we’ve told ourselves we need to put two together - two good performances in the first half and the second half. 

“And also we spoke a lot about throwing the first metaphorical punch. We don’t want to sit on our heels in the first 10, 20 minutes waiting for them to do something and react. We really want to be proactive this week, go at them, go hard at set piece, test them out wide.

“Just throw the first punch, be proactive I think.

“I think physically we’re there - we’ve proven we can compete with teams both at set piece and in open play, defensively and in attack. But probably just switching off at times.

“We’ve proven we can go long phases in defence, as we showed in the first half of the Italy game. I think we had them on the goal line for 10 phases or so. And then in the second half, the last 30 minutes, it just wasn’t good enough.

“It shows that it is there, but we just need to be mentally switched on for the whole time.”