paolo ghisoni

N. 4/2000

Paolo Ghisoni

It started with a historic victory over Scotland. And it ended with the indirect revenge of the Scottish on the Italians. The first Italian experience in the most prestigious rugby tournament in Europe ended with last place for Italy, as it was to be expected.

The contest gathering the most representative European teams clearly underlined that there is still a large technical-tactical gap between Italy and the most prestigious European clubs.

Let's start from the beginning, when Italy managed to convince a very traditional committee to accept it within the rugby elite, thus fulfilling the dream of competing with the strongest teams in playgrounds considered real sports “temples”, given their historic tradition. It was a challenge full of pride and spurs that Italy played in the best way, at least in the first games.

In the first match, Italy had to fight against the eternal rivals of England. And the “Flaminio” stadium in Rome, less important than the most prestigious “Olimpico”, also got a small revenge on the other most celebrated stadium. In fact, here the team trained by New Zealand Johnstone really astonished the new champions with a smashing performance and thus after the first day Italy was incredibly at the top, together with England and France.

Unfortunately, the match played at home with Scotland was the only exploit achieved by the men trained by Johnstone; in fact, the other matches took back Italy to the role of a starring partner, that is able to fight hard but that lacks the necessary experience to win.

This was also emphasized by the last match with France, the recent finalist at the World Cup in England. In theory, given the technical gap between Italy and France, Italy had no chance of making a good match. Yet, at the new Parisian “Estade de France”, 75,000 people, the most numerous public ever seen for a match played at home, appreciated a good team that was only beaten for its indiscipline and inconstancy.

This tournament ended in the best possible way for the Italian team; the courage of Italy won the respect of a stadium where it had never played before, with Diego Dominguez playing the role of protagonist.

In the last match, which was played in Edinburgh, Scotland, until then last with no points, managed to win over England, which had the mathematical certainty of winning the tournament.

This victory, which has many historical meanings, was a spoilsport for England, which aimed at making a Grand Slam (winning all the matches), but also relegated Italy to the last place, given Scotland's higher score quotient.

In fact, in case two teams have the same points, the difference between the tries scored and taken counts, and not result of the match played between the two teams.

And in this case Italy had a much lower difference than Scotland. And after the 1999 tournament, which turned out to be disastrous for Italy, this maybe represented a boost of confidence for this discipline, which is undoubtedly loved by Italians. Now there is the question whether Italy will manage to make the most of this positive moment.Given that there are the players and means, the objective of the Italian team for the next tournament is to demonstrate that, other than deserving to take part in it, it can also create some problems to the nations that have invited Italy.