Bizarre scenes with unpunished deliberate knock-on amidst friendly fire

The U20 World Championship kicked off yesterday in France with a number of closely fought encounters suggesting this year's edition is set to be the most competitive yet. Below is one of the stranger incidents of the day though. Italy U20s got off to the perfect start with a 27-26 victory over Scotland U20 in Béziers, despite losing a man to the sin-bin in the first half. Indeed, they were lucky they weren't reduced to 13 men early in the second period as Lodovico Manni appeared to deliberately knock the ball on as the Scots were on the attack. Bizarrely, the referee ignored what seemed to …