Donal Lenihan: The Italian Job is fun for fans but fraught for the coach and players
Caelan Doris of Ireland in action against Sebastian Negri, left, and Marco Lazzaroni during last year's Six Nations clash which the Irish won 50-17. Picture: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
At this stage, everyone has seen , be it the original dating back to 1969 with Michael Caine and Noel Coward or the brilliant 2003 remake starring Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron and Donald Sutherland.
The storyline was consistent even if the venue was subject to change. The original robbery took place on a quick-fire visit to Turin, the remake set spectacularly in Venice. The challenge was the same. Pilfer as much gold bullion as you can in an afternoon’s work.
The Six Nations championship hosts its own version of the Italian Job every year, except you don’t always have to travel to extract the maximum return. Rome has played host to all Six Nations visitors since the Italians formally entered the expanded tournament back in 2000 with the original matches staged in the cramped but atmospheric Stadio Flaminio.
Such was the demand for tickets, the Italian Federation switched to the Stadio Olimpico, shared home of Serie A clubs Roma and Lazio, and host to the 1960 Olympic Games and 1990 World Cup final. It’s a brilliant venue with ample room for 70,000 fans from both countries to mix in harmony around the temporary bars, cafes and food outlets tastefully spread around the picturesque concourse. It’s no wonder that over the last two decades, Rome has become the favourite venue for all Six Nations supporters.
The coronavirus has put paid to all such travel plans for this season’s game and, at a time when everyone is forced the watch Saturday’s game on television or tune in on radio, we pine for the simple pleasures of a coffee in the Piazza Navona on a beautiful spring afternoon with the sun glistening off the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (Fountain of the Four Rivers), designed by Bernini in 1651.
Hopefully, we’ll be back. I say ‘hopefully’ as the murmurings continue to reverberate about Italy’s place in the tournament on the back of a 28-game losing streak stretching back to February 2015 when they last won a championship game, a 19-22 win over Scotland in Murrayfield.
Bottom line is, with Grand Slams becoming more difficult to achieve, the winners of international rugby’s annual showcase tournament so often comes down to who manages to score the most points against the Italians. The minimum requirement for every team, regardless of where the game is played, is a five-point return with a try bonus point a must.
Even then, that’s not enough. Every side knows that your chances of accumulating a better points differential against the Azzuri improves the later you play them in the tournament. Having shipped a few heavy defeats, coupled with a number of injuries to an already shallow squad, by the time rounds four and five come around, they’re usually ripe for the picking.
It also helps if you have them on the final day of action. If you’re still in the hunt for honours, you have a clear points target in mind entering that game. As a consequence, some teams are less likely to tweak their side, rest players or expose new players to the demands of international rugby as they are forced to maximise their return from this contest.
Even teams like Ireland who, barring a bizarre sequence of results are out of the running to win this season’s championship, will travel at full strength as they chase as high a finish on the championship table as possible with anywhere between €500k and €1m the differential in prize money between a mid table or higher place finish.
All this means there is no respite or hiding place for the beleaguered Italians. From a coaches perspective, lose to Italy and your job is on the line. Ireland have only lost to Italy once in this tournament, an injury-ravaged 22-15 defeat in Rome back in 2013. They also beat France 23-18 in Rome that year. It proved Declan Kidney’s last hurrah as Ireland coach.
Given everything he contributed to the game in this country, he deserved a better finish than that.
Andy Farrell knows full well that professional sport is an unforgiving environment, hence he will be the latest Six Nations coach to target a big win over the Italians. For their head coach Franco Smith, like all his predecessors including Conor O’Shea who, despite doing a very good job in restructuring the game and bringing vast improvements to their under-age structure, never won a Six Nations game in his three tournaments at the helm.
Unfortunately, Grand Slams apart, this great rugby showpiece has increasingly been decided by who inflicts the most pain on Italy. France defied the recent trend of stubborn early Italian resistance with their 50-10 bonus point win in the opening game of this championship. With the bonus point in the bag early, a +40 points differential set a big target early on for those coming next.
The frightening thing about that game is that Italy played quite well, showed a lot of attacking intent and made eight line breaks against a French side whose defensive capabilities have improved enormously since the arrival of Shaun Edwards. It now looks as if Covid-19 may prove the biggest obstacle to French attempts to win this championship for the first time in 11 years with so many players testing positive after their trip to Dublin. I’m not sure what happened there.
A struggling England side were unable to come anywhere near that target, despite playing in Twickenham, in their 41-18 win over the Italians in round two. Once again Italy showed a refreshing sparkle in attack and opened the scoring with a spectacular try by Australian-born winger Monty Ioane who has enjoyed a great campaign to date.
The perennial challenge for the Italian coaches is in finding a way to keep their charges motivated every Monday morning when you start preparing for the next testing encounter after yet another whipping.
How many times have we harped on about the feelgood factor attaching to an Ireland squad assembling in late January after the provinces had completed rounds three and four of Heineken Champions Cup action on a high.
While the pandemic has robbed us of European action coming into this tournament, that boost is something the Italian players never experience in the first place.
Whatever about the national coach, how difficult and challenging is it for a pair of very good coaches like my former club and international teammate Michael Bradley at Zebre and former All Black Kieran Crowley at Benetton, coming into work every Monday morning on the back of another defeat?
Look at the Guinness PRO14 table today. Between them the two Italian sides have played 23 games but have only three wins, a 13% return, to show for their efforts. Even more damaging is the fact that Zebre registered all three wins meaning Benetton, with 12 players to the match day squads against France and England, lost all 11 of their games to date. What was their state of mind coming into international camp?
There’s been talk of promotion and relegation in the Six Nations over the last few years but on the evidence of what we saw from Georgia in the recent Autumn Nations Cup, Italy are a superior side, something they have clearly shown in the recent games between the two countries.
The problem is, from a sheer rugby perspective, the Italians have brought very little to the championship, at least on the field of play, for a long time now. If anything, the gap is getting wider.
Given Ireland’s paucity in attack, with just two opportunistic tries off lineout errors to show for their efforts in the tournament to date, the Irish coaching ticket will be feeling very nervous heading to the Stadio Olimpico this weekend.
Andy Farrell knows better than anyone that he must return with the gold bullion in the form of five match points and an improved showing from an attacking perspective. No wonder trips to Rome are so much more attractive for the supporting cast.
