ITALY: Azzurri in Space
Italy squad for the 2020 Guinness Six Nations
Props
Pietro CECCARELLI (Edinburgh Rugby, 9 caps)
Danilo FISCHETTI (Zebre Rugby Club, uncapped)
Andrea LOVOTTI (Zebre Rugby Club, 40 caps)
Marco RICCIONI (Benetton Rugby, 7 caps)
Giosuè ZILOCCHI (Zebre Rugby Club, 2 caps)
Hookers
Luca BIGI (Zebre Rugby Club, 24 caps)
Oliviero FABIANI (Zebre Rugby Club, 10 caps)
Federico ZANI (Benetton Rugby 13 caps)
Second row
Dean BUDD (Benetton Rugby, 26 caps)
Niccolò CANNONE (Argos Petrarca Rugby/Benetton Rugby, uncapped)
Federico RUZZA (Benetton Rugby, 18 caps)
David SISI (Zebre Rugby Club, 9 caps)
Alessandro ZANNI (Benetton Rugby, 117 caps)
Back row
Marco LAZZARONI (Benetton Rugby, 4 caps)
Giovanni LICATA (Zebre Rugby Club, 8 caps)
Johan MEYER (Zebre Rugby Club, 4 caps)
Sebastian NEGRI (Benetton Rugby, 22 caps)
Jake POLLEDRI (Gloucester Rugby, 13 caps)
Abraham STEYN (Benetton Rugby, 36 caps)
Scrum-halves
Callum BRALEY (Gloucester Rugby, 5 caps)
Guglielmo PALAZZANI (Zebre Rugby Club, 36 caps)
Marcello VIOLI (Zebre Rugby Club, 15 caps)
Fly-halves
Tommaso ALLAN (Benetton Rugby, 54 caps)
Carlo CANNA (Zebre Rugby Club, 39 caps)
Centres
Giulio BISEGNI (Zebre Rugby Club, 14 caps)
Tommaso BONI (Zebre Rugby Club, 11 caps)
Luca MORISI (Benetton Rugby, 29 caps)
Alberto SGARBI (Benetton Rugby, 29 caps)
Back three
Mattia BELLINI (Zebre Rugby Club, 22 caps)
Tommaso BENVENUTI (Benetton Rugby, 62 caps)
Michelangelo BIONDELLI (Fiamme Oro Rugby/Zebre Rugby Club, uncapped)
Jayden HAYWARD (Benetton Rugby, 23 caps)
Matteo MINOZZI (Wasps Rugby, 16 caps)
Edoardo PADOVANI (Zebre Rugby Club, 24 caps)
Leonardo SARTO (Benetton Rugby 34 caps)
Italy go into this year’s tournament fresh, in some ways. New coach? Check. Former Cheetahs and Newport Clart legend Franco Smith takes over the ‘I’m picking the team’ task with previous coach Conor O’Shea moving to Twickenham to become the new RFU director of performance rugby. New captain, too, in Zebre hooker Luca Bigi, and while there aren’t many new caps, the squad is still relatively light on the cap count. It’s a team that’s been around a bit, but the age profile suggests that the 2023 World Cup cycle was always the plan rather than the most recent event in Japan.
It’s a new Italy in many ways and the King is dead. Well, almost. He’s making a comeback, briefly. Despite not being named in their squad, Italy’s most capped player, Sergio Parisse, is going to play at least one more time for Italy against either Scotland or England.
I’m going to go out on a limb and make a prediction here: Parisse will play in the match v Scotland. Why? Because he’ll want to go out on a winning note and Scotland still represents Italy’s best chance of a win in the 2020 Six Nations, 20 years on from their winning debut against the reigning Five Nations champions. They have wins against all in this competition apart from England, but have not won a Six Nations match since 2015. Here’s a good quiz question: who was the last Italian outside half to start in a winning Six Nations match? Don’t google the answer and let me tell you that it was Kelly Haimona. Remember him? Even better question: the last starting outside half when they won a home match? Luciano Orquera. In 2013.
Are Italy going to win a match this season? Realistically, no. They face Wales (where they’ve never won) and France (one win ever, pre-Six Nations in 1997) away from home in the first two rounds before facing Scotland in round three. England are visitors to Rome in round four and they’ve never lost to Italy, so…. A trip to Dublin rounds off the championship and, yes, Italy’s record there is not good. The Azzurri’s chances rest on the round three clash, sandwiched between the previously mentioned fixtures. It is not so much on their own form coming into this, but more on how Scotland have got on two weeks prior in the Calcutta Cup match. If Toonie retains his hex over Eddie, then you’d have to fancy Scotland to put the clown suit on Italy.
But wait … minutes after I write the above paragraph, Finn Russell is sent home from the Scotland camp for being naughty.
Let me re-write this story. Are Italy going to win a match this season? Well, they face a Scotland team shorn of their playmaker, with a coach under pressure after a pool stage exit from the World Cup. All the pressure in that match is on Scotland. For Italy it is a celebration of all the good moments that Sergio has brought them. Why can’t they win? Why can’t they send their most iconic player of all time off into the sunset with a win? Good things do happen. People sometimes go home happy. Rome is a pretty joyous place most of the time but imagine it after the first Italian Six Nations win at home in 7 years: kids throwing themselves into fountains, grown men clasping at Tommy Allan’s hands as he is chaired off after dropping an injury time goal, every pizzeria making haggis-topped pizzas for one night only. Believe, Italia. Believe you can win and win well. Don’t make me come back next year and write the same Six Nations preview reminding you of when you last won a match. I don’t want to do it, you don’t want to hear it and my server doesn’t want to store this file for 12 months. Win, if not for me, win for little Sergi.
Can Italy win against crisis team Scotland? Yes. Will Italy win against the Finn-less, rudderless Scots? Don’t take my word for it, take the word of the first Italian in space, Franco Malerba, when he says “La Scozia? Pfft, naturalmente vinceremo”.
Preview courtesy of Yosoy
ENGLAND: Fecked!
England’s ‘Prospects’ For the 2020 Six Nations
The lie of the land
In a word, we’re fecked. If you are wondering why the beaten Rugby World Cup finalists are fecked, allow me to elaborate on why this is.
We were BEATEN by the dastardly Boks in the RWC final having duffed the All Blacks in the previous week. We should have been handed the cup and been given an apology by Rassie Erasmus for having the temerity to even think about competing with us for the cup. That would have been justice served. Justice 4 Brexit, Justice 4 Boris, Justice 4 Sag.
Instead we were smashed in the heid, scrum and breakdown and did stupid, stupid things like put Faz in a lineout. I know he can counter ruck the Scottish lock off a ball, but feck the feck off the lineouts.
More recently the wonderful, lovely, amazing Saracens have been fined, points docked and told they will be relegated at the end of the season. Just for some measly lost pounds. Which those dastardly Munster boys told Jamie George he should lose. The fecking cheek of that.
So, with a beaten up, demoralised, divided camp let’s look at these wooden spoon receivers.
Forwards
The good news is that we’ve nicked the heinous Bok forwards coach. The bad news is that he’s definitely a plant and we’ll be running upright into contact and stripped of the ball by some cheeky Valleys scamp in red. The scrum will go backwards, the lineouts fail and Billy is broken again. Maybe he should run with his arms above his head like my uncle, Earl Cnut, in battle.
Props are too fat and slow, locks are knackered, flankers are locks, no8 is broken. In terms of selection, I am sanguine. There’s no one else available. We’re absolutely fecked.
Backs
Where to start with this bunch of clowns. I guess Eddie is determined to give Ben Youngs his centurion of caps. But if he doesn’t improve then he can make like a tree and get out of here.
It would have been nice to have seen Shithair in the squad but he’s injured. Otherwise we’ve got Manu. At least we’ve got Manu. He can pair up with JJ. But when was the last time Bath actually won anything? Last millennium. They’ve been shit since Guscott left. Maybe Manu could play no8 or something and we don’t even have centres.
Fly half is captain Faz and will probably be red carded two minutes into each game and we can’t rely on his boot.
Our wings are sort of okay, but the only time they’ll see the ball is when they are retrieving it from the crowd. At least they can chase a kick.
I’m predicting disaster.
Matches
France
First up in Paris. We’ll get mullered by a hungry French team displaying the guile and wit we knew they were keeping secret for the last 15 years as a funny prank to play on us in this game. About the same score as last year, but reversed.
47-8 to France.
Scotland
Then we come to Murrayfield. Even if you told us to hold on to a 30-point advantage for half a game, at home, we still couldn’t win against this lot.
This is Scotland’s Six Nations Grand Final and they’ve had the Calcutta for the last 2 years (cats have also been lying with dogs). Expect this to continue for another year with a pictures of an arse-faced EnglishScotsman holding the cup sticking his tongue out like Gene Simmons (but without the infamous charm) appearing all over Twitter. Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.
23-3 to Scotland
Ireland
We then come to the first home game where Ireland will roost us into oblivion and avenge the freak loss from 2019. England’s forwards won’t have enough for this bunch of miserable bastards. Only the sight of a beaten puppy can crack a smile into their faces. That beaten puppy will be England.
28-3 to Ireland
Wales
Next up, we have the Welsh at Twickenham. New coach, some new players, world cup high of winning morally against the All Blacks, means that this Welsh team will cross the Severn brimming with confidence. Expect it to rain Welsh tries and the doom and gloom to continue. England will be served on toast mixed into a cheese and beer sauce.
60-0 to Wales
Italy
The last game should be the easiest, but we’ll be so lacklustre that we’ll fuck it up and Sergio will finish his glittering career by ratcheting up a win against us in Rome. England to be roasted in a giant pizza oven and served up on smaller pieces of toast than last week.
10-9 to Italy
Conclusion (#FACTBOMB)
So there we are. Fecked. England to eat shit and come last. Eddie, the French and the Celts to keep laughing. The Italians to stare disbelievingly at each other until the June tours when Reality will rear its hideous head. Craigsman to pick the wrong month to give up meth again.
Preview courtesy of Craigsman
Further Reading
FalteringFullback with more on England’s woes, and his 6N predictions.
On the telly this week (sod all)
Friday 24th January
| Northampton v London Irish | 19:45 | BT Sport 2 |
Saturday 25th January
| Southern Kings v Cheetahs | 13:00 | Freesports |
| Bristol v Gloucester | 15:00 | BT Sport 2 |
Sunday 26th January
| Harlequins v Saracens | 15:00 | BT Sport 2 |
Ovally Balls 
Hundreds of dead people.
A lot of dead horses.
Hundreds if not thousands of dead mules, cattle, sheep.
Millions of dead buffalo towards the end.
Quite a few dead dogs.
0 dead beavers.
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” Now contemplating firing up an actual work-related spreadsheet.”
It’s the live google sheet continually being fucked around with by the various competing interests as our part of the company is dismembered that is my current waking nightmare. Such a good move to let Finance generate the initial data and then let the bigwigs loose on it before anyone who knew what any the stuff we actually make is got a look in.
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Before anyone gets carried away with the positivity of the dead beaver count I should point out that the live beaver count is identical.
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Hope the jaw is slightly better today Flair (hope it’s a lot better, but being realistic about these things).
I’m actually quite excited that Super rugby is kicking off this morning. I haven’t followed the preseason at all and know bugger all about the squads, especially those in the island conferences, so can’t comment with any kind of authority or insight on how things will pan out.* You’ll have my SA analysis over the weekend Thauma.
* This season being no different to any other.
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Good luck with the mandible, flair. Or if it’s not the mandible whatever the upper jaw is called.
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Cheers, Deebee! I may not be sober enough to read it until Monday.
CMW – https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/30/drivers-of-change-beavers-released-on-national-trust-land-to-ease-flooding-risk
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@Thaum – They’ll be everywhere at this rate. Soon enough going out looking for beavers and not seeing any won’t even be special.
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At least everyone will be able to do this joke.
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I see Kitson’s trolling us Welsh in his article. Wouldn’t have it any other way.
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George Burgess, better known as the eye gouging younger brother of Sam, made his debut for Wigan last night. His defence didn’t get off to the best start.
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@tegz
He got clowned there. I really liked the Wigan 6. Top skillz.
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Some stringent but accurate reffing in that clip.
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Blues got battered at home by the Chiefs – no change there (sorry AVS), whilst their sorry counterparts across the ditch, the Reds, are currently 17-7 up at the Brumbies. That would be a slight departure from recent form.
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Little bit of SR I saw this morning seems defense is optional again.
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I’m more of an AWOO man, BB.
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For all those fascinated to know the relative ages of the Scottish & Irish squads for tomorrow, I’ve shamelessly lifted the stats from the SRB
Backs
Average age: Ireland 27.9, Scotland 26.5
Caps: Ireland 281, Scotland 209
Forwards
Average age: Ireland 27.4, Scotland 26.6
Caps: Ireland 281, Scotland 179
Replacements
Average age: Ireland 27.8, Scotland 27.6
Caps: Ireland 241, Scotland 140
Make of that what thou wilt
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Couldn’t find any stats on smile / score ratio
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@yosoy
Bevan Green, yes. I had to work out who you meant there. When people say 6 they usually mean the stand-off. But he was playing fullback. Stupid squad numbers.
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Brumbies now 24-17 up as the Reds revert to type.
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Bit simplistic Yos – you needed to split the not an animal into the cultural appropriation and religiously intolerant segment as well. Admittedly, you’d only have Kiwis in that mix.
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27-24 Brumbies, with 3 minutes to go. Looks like an Aussie side will get an early season win!
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My pie charts? You take that back.
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Is a sunwolf a real animal? Think we need a new category for mythical beasts
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Japanese wolf that likes basking out in the sun. Hibernates 10 months a year, which is why we didn’t see it in the World Cup.
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Thaum, just sent you an Ireland preview, written entirely as an email. It’s shit.
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I love that book.
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Is it even more upbeat than The Road?
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The answer to your ironic question is an ironic yes. It is bleaker than The Road.
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Think I’ll save that for a time when I’m feeling happy.
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i.e. when Scotland win the 6N & I’ve scooped a sizeable lottery win.
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@chimpie
Never give up. That lottery win could well come in one day.
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When you lose a baby tooth in France, you wrap it in a nice little box and put it under your pillow. At night the fairy mouse ( la petite souris) will come and swap it for a small coin. Kids stop worrying about losing teeth.
I did the opposite. I let a dentist put two teeth in my mouth, dropped a big bounty on his desk, and what do I get, but a puffed-up face. And a serious worry, should it happen again.
Thanks for the good wishes, I’m fine. Plus, I lost 2 pounds.
I’ll be in perfect shape for the first game on Saturday.
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‘At night the fairy mouse ( la petite souris) will come and swap it for a small coin.’
Apparently inflation has resulted in a going rate of £5 or £10 notes which seems rather excessive. we’ve negotiated a £1 limit with the tooth fairy (UK version). This is apparently most unfair.
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Reading recommendation?
I just finished ” Jesus out to sea” by James Lee Burke. Brilliant collection of 9 short novels, written around 2000 but mostly set in the 40s and 50s in Louisiana and Texas.
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From the graun :
George Furbank; Jonny May, Manu Tuilagi, Owen Farrell (capt), Elliot Daly; George Ford, Ben Youngs; Joe Marler, Jamie George, Kyle Sinckler, Maro Itoje, Courtney Lawes, Sam Underhill, Tom Curry.
Replacements: Luke Cowan-Dickie, Ellis Genge, Will Stuart, George Kruis, Lewis Ludlam, Willi Heinz, Ollie Devoto, Jonathan Joseph
Only 14 starters!! Absolutely fecked. FECKED!!!!
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It is bleaker than The Road
I always liked that song.
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Predictions, now that Eddie has finally plucked up the courage to name a team:
Wales v Italy – Wales by 25
Ireland v Scotland – Ireland by 17
France v England – France by 4
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‘Ireland v Scotland – Ireland by 17’
Just need to reverse the order of the numbers here.
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3 close matches for me:
England by 6
Ireland by 5
Italy by 1 – mild shock of the round.
I’ll do the men’s matches shortly.
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Reading matter is currently Gnomon by Nick Harraway. No real idea what’s going on yet but it’s an interesting ride.
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Only 14 starters!!
Typical English arrogance.
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Where’ the kitty to give these English posters some backbone?
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Happy with that team other than being slightly befuddled by picking 2 centres and no real back 3 cover on the bench (why not Thorley over one of the two?). Praying Furbank plays a blinder so we can consign Daly at 15 to the dustbin.
In light of that, revising my prediction to be France by only 20-30 points rather than 40 odd.
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Charlie Ewels is the missing lock for those interested.
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FFB – fantastic error by the graun.
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I mean, I know Maro is good but he’s not that good.
Would have helped us stay under the salary cap if he could play both lock roles at the same time though…
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Ah, predictions, how I’ve missed you.
Wales by 20.
Ireland by 15.
England by 12.
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https://www.thefarside.com/2020/01/31/0
Serendipty…
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Predictions?
England by 5. Or 25.
Wales by 20
Ireland by 5
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