An eight-team tournament, featuring the Under-20 squads of Georgia, Romania, Chile - the hosts, Korea, Uruguay, Jamaica, Namibia, and the Cook Islands, comprising 208 players in total, kicked off in Santiago, Chile, on Tuesday.
The IRB-sponsored tournament, named the Junior World Rugby Trophy, comprises two pools of four teams who will all play each other on a round-robin basis, with matches on Tuesday, April 15, Saturday, April 19, and Wednesday April 23, followed by a final on Sunday April 27.
In Pool A, Romania came from behind to beat Namibia in the tightest of the day's matches, in front of 4,000 spectators at the Stade Français club in Santiago.
The honour of scoring the first ever try of the tournament went to Romanian captain Ionel Cazan when he crossed the line in the third minute of the first half.
The early exchanges made the growing crowd believe that Romania would simply run away with the game, but after 20 minutes the Namibians managed to find their footing and dominated for the following 40 minutes. The sending off of lock Renaud van Neel for illegal use of the boot coincided with the recovery of Romania.
In an exciting match that went down to the wire, both teams played hard and three Romanians were sin-binned. Yet it was far from a dirty affair, only two highly motivated sides trying to start the tournament with a win. In the end it was Romania who held out for a 28-26 victory.
The gathered crowd then got to see the day's main attraction, as both Chile and the Cook Islands walked onto the pitch surrounded by a group of 60 underprivileged children who are playing the game thanks to a development programme.
After the anthems, Chile faced the Cook Islands' haka and with the adrenalin flowing both sides came within inches of each other. Motivation was not going to be a problem for either side or the large crowd, estimated by Chilean Federation officials at 4,000 spectators.
Both teams had met a year ago at the IRB Under 19 World Championship and as in 2007, Chile emerged victorious, although this time by a larger winning margin. With scrum half Max Rochette showing great form and with a superb try in the opening minutes from one of the best performers of the first round, outside centre Francisco de la Fuente, Chile were soon in command.
Their eagerness, probably because of the loud support, meant the team failed to capitalise on their superiority and a number of try-scoring opportunities went begging.
In fact, in one of those deep attacking opportunities, Cook Islands centre Teddy Stanaway-Teao perfectly read the run of play and intercepted to score a 70-yard runaway try. The 20-10 half-time score did not reflect the Chilean performance.
The second half was again dominated by Chile, who in the end ran out 33-10 winners to the delight of the crowd that will certainly grow for the host nation's next match against Namibia on Saturday.
Meanwhile, in Pool B, Uruguay and Georgia both stormed to handsome victories, Uruguay 67-8 over Korea and Georgia 90-3 over the Jamaicans in Santiago's San Carlos stadium.
With thanks to the IRB.