Italy chop and change for Wales

Italy head coach Conor O’Shea has made several alterations to his starting XV to take on Wales in their Six Nations clash in Rome on Saturday.

Most of the changes are in the back-line and there are also some positional switches after last weekend’s defeat to Scotland in their tournament opener at Murrayfield.

Michele Campagnaro moves to his favoured outside centre position, after playing on the left wing against Scotland, while Angelo Esposito will wear the number 11 jersey against Wales after playing on the right wing last weekend.

Edoardo Padovani takes over from Esposito in the number 14 jersey.

With Campagnaro back in midfield, Luca Morisi moves from outside to inside centre where he takes over from Tommaso Castello.

Elsewhere, Guglielmo Palazzani will start at scrum-half again after coming into the run-on side as a late replacement for the injured Tito Tebaldi before the Scotland game.

The final change is in the forwards where Nicola Quaglio replaces Andrea Lovotti at loosehead prop.

Italy: 15 Jayden Hayward, 14 Edoardo Padovani, 13 Michele Campagnaro, 12 Luca Morisi, 11 Angelo Esposito, 10 Tommaso Allan, 9 Guglielmo Palazzani, 8 Sergio Parisse (c), 7 Abraham Steyn, 6 Sebastian Negri, 5 Dean Budd, 4 David Sisi, 3 Simone Ferrari, 2 Leonardo Ghiraldini, 1 Nicola Quaglio
Replacements: 16 Luca Bigi, 17 Cherif Traore’, 18 Tiziano Pasquali, 19 Federico Ruzza, 20 Marco Barbini, 21 Edoardo Gori, 22 Ian McKinley, 23 Tommaso Benvenuti

Date: Saturday, February 9
Venue: Stadio Olimpico, Rome
Kick-off: 17:45 local (16:45 GMT)
Referee: Mathieu Raynal (France)
Assistant referees: Wayne Barnes (England), Shuhei Kubo (Japan)
TMO: David Grashoff (England)

[playbuzz-item item=”2fe43c8c-f6ef-4af2-804a-ac646f3dde7b” info=”false” shares=”false” wp-pb-id=”452051″]