Why Italy can now beat anyone in the world

Italian rugby has long been, rightly or wrongly, the butt of many jokes in the rugby world. Annual 40-50 point drubbings in the Six Nations were common and expected and seven years without a Six Nations win was a large monkey on their backs. Not so long ago it was trendy and vogue for fans to call for their expulsion from the Northern Hemisphere’s premier international tournament with Tweeters and pundits alike demanding their relegation and replacement with Georgia or even South Africa.

However, Italian rugby, over the last five years, has undergone a transformation on par with 2010s Japan or Pablo Lemoine’s Chile side. This resurgence has been brewing and bubbling for awhile now, Italy’s u20s side, in contrast to their full nation side, regularly beat their Welsh and Scottish counterparts in the u20s Six Nations and even recorded a famous victory over England this year. There has been clear investment in this department which has bore fruit in the form of a class of talented young stars, Fischetti, Lamaro, Cannone, Garbisi, Menoncello and Capuozzo to name a few. This talent development has been affirmed by French investment, previous France-based Italian trailblazers like Castrogiovanni and Parisse relatively pale in comparison to Montpellier’s talisman Garbisi and Toulouse wonderkid Capuozzo. Without getting too far ahead of myself, as international rugby is easily the most competitive now as it has ever been, it could be argued that Italy, on their day, can beat any other Tier 1 team.

So how did Six Nations punching bag Italy beat perennial Rugby Championship winners and World Cup contenders Australia? Were the Aussie’s way off the pace or were the Italian’s punching well above their weight? And what does this win tell us about Italy’s role on the world stage going forward?

Italy have always been a team that can compete with other Tier 1 teams with their elusive attack. Although previously their attack could become slow, stagnate and predictable they’ve always been able to score three or four tries against the best teams in the world. Their issue has always been fitness, basics and defence. They start well and then get tired and make sloppy errors and their defensive structure collapses, cue leaking 30 points.

There has been a marked difference in these trends under Crowley, although slow at first. Italy and Australia both used the same basic defensive system, an out-to-in shut down (blitz) defence. What this means is your outside defenders slam hard infield to stop the ball moving into the wide channels. The way you defend out-to-in as a winger is you either: 1. Slam hard and make a man and ball tackle behind the gainline or 2. Cut off midfield options then turn and chase out and kill the attack in the wide channels.

What we saw on Saturday was a masterclass in how to do this from the Italian wingers Ioane and Bruno and a lesson in how not to do it from the Australian wings Wright and Nawaqanitawase.

Straight from the off Capuozzo and Bruno slam really hard and Capuozzo makes a perfect man and ball tackle in midfield way behind the gainline, textbook.

Watch here how Ioane expertly slams to deny Holloway space and then recovers to chase out and tackle Nawaqanitawase covering two attackers at once and winning the turnover.

Compare that to here where Wright slams far too hard and attempts the intercept so he isn’t in a position to recover and stop Bruno scoring in the corner.

Again here Wright is in no-man’s-land and in no position to make a tackle or stop the attack, he makes an ill-advised and ineffective decision to slam and make a tackle but he doesn’t get man and ball and leaves loads of space outside him.

Here Capuozzo covers space and almost recovers to make a try-saving tackle, but for a perfect pass from Lolesio and an outrageous finish from Wright. If the pitch was a metre longer Capuozzo makes a miraculous recovery here and stops the try.

Italy have also massively developed their attack and have effectively laid down a marker on the world stage on how dangerous they can be. Ruck speed is one of the most valuable statistics in practice and astonishingly Italy topped the 0-3 second ruck stat at the weekend ahead of the likes of France, Ireland and New Zealand.

0 – 3 sec rucks as a percentage on Saturday:

FRA: 54
SCO: 56.1
Fiji: 56.8
ENG: 63.3
ARG: 65.6
NZ: 67.8
JAP: 69.3
SA: 70.2
AUS: 71.6
WAL: 73.1
IRE: 74.1

A gap

ITA: 85.1 !

— Riaan Louw (@Ringo26) November 15, 2022

You can see this in the Capuozzo try as shown as above, the lack of hesitation and ruthlessness in the Italy attack is impressive.

The other way the Italy attack has massively developed is their kicking game, or rather, lack of it. Italy kicked the ball more than any other team in the 2022 Six Nations, aiming to pin the opposition in their own half and force them into errors, similar to South Africa or Leicester Tigers. When Italy lost 22-33 to Scotland in this year’s tournament Italy kicked the ball 41 times to Scotland’s 35. Over the whole tournament Paulo Garbisi kicked for a staggering total 1787 metres, only exceeded by Dupont with 1930. However, vs Australia last Saturday, Italy kicked the ball just 16 times. This was either due to Garbisi being missing or a clear tactical shift towards trusting their free-flowing running-rugby

Furthermore, Italy recently have really pushed for a dual 10-12 axis with two traditional fly-halfs. They tried this with Carlo Canna at 12 and then Leonardo Marin at 12, with no real success. Well this week Luca Morisi, a traditional out-and-out centre, was simply superb. His defence was almost perfect and his vision to spot the chance on the blindisde for the Bruno try, and subsequent looping pass to the winger, was world class. Morisi assisted two of Italy’s tries and would have been my man of the match after the deserved winner, Lucchesi, who was immense.

Going back to the question I posed in my introduction, Australia never looked worthy of the win, they never got into any rhythm and never really looked like scoring. They were prone to basic errors and silly penalties, 15 to Italy’s 9, and scored two of their tries from Italian errors rather from their own structure and tactics.

Italy on the other hand were positively overzealous and actually extremely complacent. Although they had periods of dominance in open-play, their set-piece left a lot to work on, conceding a fair few penalties and turnovers at the scrum and lineout, and they struggled to exit from restarts on more than one occasion.

However, you could see Italy always believed they could win and trusted each other to do what needed to be done. Italian teams have led against fellow Six Nations opposition many many times and previously you could see they never looked like they believed and trusted each other to see it through. This team is so overconfident you’d think they were world champions, the type of confidence you can only get from a win over Wales, which has clearly acted as a spring-board for this new-found belief in themselves. You can see this in their poster boy, Capuozzo, that his teammates trust him with the ball. Like so many famous finishers from Italy’s national sport, Inzaghi, Del Piero, Totti, when Italy need to score they look to Capuozzo and trust him with possession.

Furthermore, Tommy Allan left 11 points on the park and Padovani another three with four missed penalties and a conversion which could have put Italy way out of sight of the Wallabies before the drama of the 80th minute Neville score. When you consider that Italy were missing their talisman, Garbisi, at 10, who is arguably a more assured goalkicker than Allan, it shows how comfortable Italy actually are on the world stage right now. Years of ridicule have bred a potential superpower and not only that but also one of the most exciting teams to watch in world rugby right now.