Playing rugby in a heatwave is a tough proposition for a bunch of peely-wally Scots but the national under-20 squad have been preparing for such an eventuality with the help of some high-end technology at the University of the West of Scotland. The players have been training in a heat chamber ahead of the World Rugby U20 Championships which begins in Italy next Sunday. Scotland face a fiendishly difficult draw - they’re up against England, Australia and South Africa in the group stage - and it will be made even tougher by the fact that the games kick off in the afternoon when temperatures are expected to be around 35 degrees. The bespoke chambers at the Lanarkshire campus replicate environmental extremes, from heat and humidity to altitude, and the young Scots have been sweating it out on exercise bikes to prepare for their opening match against defending champions England in Verona. “You're basically in this wee room with watt bikes, and the temperature is raised to about 35, 40 degrees and then you just go through this gruelling watt bike session, and I've never sweated so much in my life,” said Freddy Douglas, the Edinburgh prodigy, who has been named Scotland’s co-captain for the tournament alongside Glasgow’s Johnny Ventisei. “You get to the end of it, it literally looks like the room's flooded, there's just so much sweat on the floor, it's crazy.” It has been a punishing schedule but head coach Kenny Murray makes no apologies for pushing his players. Scotland are back in the top-tier tournament for the first time since relegation six years ago and there is a determination to stay there. They secured promotion last summer by winning the second-tier World Rugby U20 Trophy tournament on home turf in Edinburgh but this is a huge step up, a point Murray is keen to impress upon his players. “It was a great success last summer winning the junior World Trophy but it’s a completely different challenge now against the teams we’re playing,” said the coach. “This is where we want to be. We want to be competing against the better teams in the world. We want to get tested against England, South Africa and Australia. We’ve worked hard to get here and now it’s about going out and really experiencing it and doing our best.” The heatwave that has engulfed most of western Europe only adds to the degree of difficulty and Murray plans to use his whole squad over the course of the tournament. “All of our kick-offs are at 3.30 in the afternoon, so that provides an extra challenge,” said Murray. “We've got five-day turnarounds, against England, Australia and South Africa. We need to manage the squad, we need to make sure that we use the 30 players we've got available to us. Touch wood we don't get any injuries, but if we do, we need these guys on standby ready to come in. “We've had four heat chamber sessions at the University of West of Scotland in Hamilton. We've managed to train at 35 degrees and humidity between 70 and 80 per cent. We've had our rugby training at Ravenscraig during the day then at the end of the day, we've gone to the heat chambers to do some extra fitness sessions. I'm sure we'll get the benefit of that when we get out to Italy.” Murray’s squad will also have the benefit of being able to call upon Douglas. The openside won a full cap in the autumn, coming on against Portugal at Murrayfield to become Scotland’s youngest male debutant in 60 years, but Gregor Townsend resisted the temptation to include him in his senior squad for the summer tour games against Maori All Blacks, Fiji and Samoa. Instead, Douglas will continue his education with the under-20s. He was part of the Trophy-winning squad last summer but missed the start of this season’s U20 Six Nations through injury. He returned for the games against England, Wales and France, and made a sizeable contribution with three tries, including a stunning solo effort in the 45-40 defeat in Paris. It has been a whirlwind season for the 20-year-old who made his senior Scotland bow before he had even played for Edinburgh. He followed up his first cap with a man-of-the-match performance for Scotland A in the win over Chile before making his debut for Edinburgh in a victory over Benetton in Italy. Injury hampered his progress soon after but he came back strongly in the U20 Six Nations and that try in Paris was likened to Jonah Lomu but an excited French press. “To be honest if someone had said to me at this time last year I'd have had this season I wouldn't believe them, it's all been a bit crazy, it all happened so fast,” he said. “I've not really had a chance to properly look back and reflect on it all, but I'm just very happy and very proud of where I'm at at the moment.” Scotland warmed up for the U20 Worlds with an encouraging win over Ireland in Belfast but Douglas is under no illusion about the scale of the task awaiting them in Italy. “Obviously it is a tough pool, England, South Africa are all class teams, but I think going into every game we're underdogs which is kind of, well for me anyway, a good mentality, because it means a lot of times people underestimate you,” said the local Edinburgh boy who came through the ranks at Stewart’s Melville College. “It’ll be good for our mentality. It means we’ve got nothing to lose, we can just go full momentum.” This will be his final championship at under-20 level and Douglas intends to leave the squad in a good place. “When we were in the Trophy last year the whole mindset was ‘we need to get back in the World Championship’,” he said. “It's where you get to play against teams such as South Africa, Australia, the All Blacks and stuff. It's where we feel we deserve to be and where we want to actually be, so it's class that we're actually getting to do it this year.”