Italy coach: 'Ireland now like All Blacks of old'

HIGH PRAISE: Italy's Head Coach Gonzalo Quesada has compared Ireland to the All Blacks of old.Pic Credit: Ben Brady, Inpho.

Gonzalo Quesada knows what it is like to face oblivion against rugby’s best.

The Italy coach played 36 times for Argentina between the mid-nineties and early noughties. Four of those caps came against the All Blacks and only once, when pushing them to four points in front of 59,000 people in Buenos Aires, did they manage to make a game of it.

His first experience came in Wellington in 1997 when the final score was 93-8. The other two games saw the Pumas concede north of 60 points each time, in Hamilton and then in Christchurch. Irish teams of old will know how that felt.

So, when Quesada compares Ireland now to the New Zealand of old it makes your ears stand up and take notice.

Sometimes players and coaches are led by the nose into giving notable answers. Not here. The Italian boss made this comparison all of his own accord after the Azzurri were nilled while conceding six tries and 36 points to their hosts in Dublin.

“They didn’t need to do anything special, just go through their system, their attack. They were always on the front foot and after several phases we were kind of waiting for them. It was not always like that, sometimes we defended better.

“The first-half was a bit different to the second but when we had that 19 points of difference it was like the All Blacks from some years ago when they do their basics and they had a hundred per cent from their scrum and their lineout and at high balls.

“They were also running their rucks in attack and defence with extreme efficiency so there was nothing we didn’t expect in terms of level of performance. They did what we know they can do. The frustration is more that we didn’t put a bit more pressure on them.”

Italy came here under no illusions. “We know we have some limits,” said Quesada. But they had some wind in their sails after pushing England to their pin of their collar in Rome in week one. This was a very different assignment.

Paolo Garbiso missed a straightforward penalty that would have opened the scoring in the fifth minute but Italy never looked like landing a punch after that. Then again its hard to land a punch if you don’t throw any.

“It’s hard. I was talking to the leaders’ group during the week and they said what happens a lot is we put in a good performance and then the next one is tough, we have a bad result depending on how the other team play.

“We talked about it, we worked on it but there is no two-week miracle. We have been working together for three weeks now. Of course we want things to move faster and to change but with Ireland at this level I don’t know how many teams in the world can beat them.”