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 
Well done to Bristol!
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Craigs, I watched about half an hour of it at three o’clock this morning when I couldn’t sleep due to back pain.
I’ll defintely watch the rest, but it’s harrowing to say the least.
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Also, Dry January has gone oot the windae due to the back pain – whisky is a big help.
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I think somehow Sale were destined to beat Exeter today, although the Chiefs did seem to have recovered in the second half. I didn’t see it.
Any one see the game and can comment?
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That space force badge is a stroke of ‘accidental?’ genius. You can’t mock it for looking like Star Trek because everyone loves Star Trek. Base votes in the bag, and that perfect blend of showbiz USA melding with political showbiz USA.
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It being Burns Night, I of course will start with Seamus Heaney
From the start, Burns’ birl and rhythm,
That tongue the Ulster Scots brought wi’ them
And stick to still in County Antrim
Was in my ear.
From east of Bann it westered in
On the Derry air.
My neighbours toved and bummed and blowed,
They happed themselves until it thowed,
By slaps and stiles they thrawed and tholed
And snedded thrissles,
And when the rigs were braked and hoed
They’d wet their whistles.
Old men and women getting crabbèd
Would hark like dogs who’d seen a rabbit,
Then straighten, stare and have a stab at
Standard habbie:
Custom never staled their habit
O’ quotin’ Rabbie.
Leg-lifting, heartsome, lightsome Burns!
He overflowed the well-wrought urns
Like buttermilk from slurping churns,
Rich and unruly,
Or dancers flying, doing turns
At some wild hooley.
For Rabbie’s free and Rabbie’s big,
His stanza may be tight and trig
But once he sets the sail and rig
Away he goes
Like Tam-O-Shanter o’er the brig
Where no one follows.
And though his first tongue’s going, gone,
And word lists now get added on
And even words like stroan and thrawn
Have to be glossed,
In Burns’s rhymes they travel on
And won’t be lost.
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As the joke goes, Burns Night is the night when Scots get blotto on whisky to celebrate not having to eat haggis for another year.
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Prince Charles is visiting an Edinburgh hospital. He enters a ward full of patients and greets one.
The patient replies:
“Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o the puddin’-race!
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye worthy o’ a grace
As lang’s my arm.”
Charles is confused, so he just grins and moves on to the next patient. The patient responds:
“Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it,
But we hae meat and we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be Thankit!.”
Even more confused, and his grin now rictus-like, the Prince moves on to the next patient, who immediately begins to chant:
“Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi’ bickering brattle!
I wad be lathe tae rin an’ chase thee,
Wi’ murd’ring pattle!
Now seriously troubled, Charles turns to the accompanying doctor and asks “Is this a psychiatric ward?”
“No,” replies the doctor, “this is the Serious Burns Unit.”
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Proper laugh-out-loud at that, Ticht – I’m nicking it for elsewhere!
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Ticht – I just read that to Mrs Craig’s who told me about the time she lived in Cove and Kilcreggan. At a school play/show she had to read out a Robert Burns poem and was told to put on a faux Scottish accent in front of the largely Scottish audience. Her parents were absolutely pissing themselves at the back.
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Burns, Haggis and bagpipes – what more do you want?
I just love Fred Morrison, he is so wild in his playing
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The man knows how to work his pipes
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I have practiced great restraint this evening, I hope it has been noted 😀
So now I feel I’ve earned a couple of free posts on Burns
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For me, this is one of the most beautiful things ever committed to tape
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Like Nick Darke the bagpipes kind of sneak up on the outside and take you by surprise after a good few listenings.
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Well obviously they really don’t, but I like them sometimes. Watched a few more Youtube vids of this Fred Morrison, amazing.
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Ticht – have you watched any of the Stewart Copeland series on music (BBC4). I’ve seen the first couple and they’ve been quite interesting and looking at music in a slightly different way. Of course, it maybe depends on how much you can thole Copeland (and it also does contain added Sting).
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I saw the first one BB, I enjoyed it.
I seem to have a higher tolerance of Sting than a lot of folks, I don’t really mind him at all, he’s a bit of a jerk in person, or can be, by all accounts but he lives for music
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CMW, I just love everything about Fred, his look, his playing, everything
I know someone on one of the islands that books gigs and she is a big part of the Gaelic cultural scene. Fred is a huge part and supporter of it, a really good guy
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I do like the idea od the undercover music guy, Nick Darke
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Some friends invited me to a double celebration tonight, Chinese New Year and of course the celebration of The Bard, they called it a Chinese Burns Night.
I didn’t want to go but they twisted my arm.
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Morning!
Fair report on the Exeter/Sale game on the BBC Sport pages:
https://www.bbc.com/sport/rugby-union/51192166
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Burnsian hangovers this morning???
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Nae me, squire.
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Wee Greeg to Perpignan apparently.
They are currently 3rd in ProD2
Is there a play off for promotion or is it straight league topper that goes up?
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Ah, good old wiki
There are 30 rounds in the regular season, with each team playing each other team home and away. The two halves of the season are played in the same order, with the away team in the first half of the season at home in the second half. The semi-finals and final take place in May, with the second- and third-place teams hosting the semi-finals and the final taking place at a predetermined site
So it’s better to be second ot third rather than first, which seems unfair
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Though I guess first against fouth away from home squares things up a bit, if that is how it works
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It’s the same format as the Top14 play-offs, ticht. 3v6, 4v5. Winners play 1 and 2 in the semi-finals.
The winner of the final gets automatic promotion, the runner-up plays 13th in the Top14 in a decider.
So, you don’t get automatic promotion for winning the league. Since the system’s been in operation top of the league has always gone up. And so has the 3rd place team.
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A friend of a friend of mine is the grandson of a former President of Montpellier. Good(ish) lad, Druge problem, unfortunately, and an Aston Villa fan, even more so,
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Druge problem was cos he couldn’t spell drug.
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So, cheats v supercheats.
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Whit? Manu V at 10?
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Oh, apparently it’s a different Manu Vunipola.
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Are Sarries still collecting points in the league? There’s been so much noise around them I can’t remember what points situation is. I know they’re relegated so points don’t matter in league terms.
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Wow, what a squint lineout.
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Lovely try from Quins!
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Indeed it was – but you posted that about 2 mins before I saw it!
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Terrific try by Care (and Dombrandt).
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… that was the squint line-out…..
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And I’ve just realised that I’ve got my Tuilagis and Vunipolae confused anyway.
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Marcus Smith again, the laddie is just brilliant
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Now that was a lovely try.
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Sarries 2s getting a kicking.
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Tom Penny & the Sarriesbreakers
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V good, Thaum
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By my arithmetic Marcus Smith is on his 75th appearance, he’s still 20 years old (if only just)
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Smith sells a dummy and the whole of Saracens buy it! He definitely has a bit of a spark about him – which is probably why Eddie disnae like him.
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Plus his game’s for England age-group sides, ticht.
Good player.
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Eddie loves him, BB. He’s been in England squads. Just not one of the best 2 outside halves at the moment.
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