Italy boss hails young ‘Grenade Squad’ that bettered Springboks’ famed ‘Bomb Squad’
Italy's captain Niccolo Cannone and an inset of head coach Gonzalo Quesada.
Italy head coach Gonzalo Quesada has praised the impact of his young replacements in the defeat to the Springboks at Loftus Versfeld.
While South Africa emerged 42-24 victors in Pretoria, the Italians got the better of the world champions, winning the second half 19-14 thanks largely to the impact from the bench.
The Springboks named a 6-2 bench that boasted 466 Test caps worth of experience, while in stark contrast, the Azzurri replacements included three debutants and just 46 international appearances combined.
Grenade Squad
Ahead of the match, the head coach explained that he could not select the more conventional 5-3 split on the bench against the Springboks and had to go for a more forward-heavy approach despite the injury setbacks from the clash with Namibia.
“It is difficult to consider the possibility of bringing a 5-3 bench against South Africa,” he said after naming his team.
“We are forced to play with a 6+2 to face them: we cannot afford to have one less forward.”
That tactic ultimately paid off as it was the youth of Italy that got the better of the Springboks‘ famed Bomb Squad, with Quesada dubbing his replacements as the ‘Grenade Squad’ in the aftermath of the match and revealed how the Azzurri shifted their performance in the second half.
“A lot of the credit goes to the captain and the leaders because of the way they talked and prepared the team to handle the second half, which was really incredible,” he said.
“I think we had our grenade squad that did really well. The team that started the second half did really well and then all of the players on the bench brought something in, even those who were playing their first game for the national team.
“The key thing was discipline and believing more in ourselves.”
Bomb Squad fails to fire
Meanwhile, Boks head coach Rassie Erasmus explained his decision to throw on an entirely new front five early in the second half of the match.
“We sent them on because in the first 10 minutes of the second half, it was like stop-start. Then the prop was down, and then the lineout and then the try was disallowed, and then there was a wait, and just it didn’t feel like there was enough intensity because of the stoppages,” Erasmus explained.
“A part from RG Snyman, the guys we put on weren’t really bigger than the starters; Vincent isn’t bigger than Wilco, Bongi and Malcolm are pretty much the same size, so we tried to get the intensity and speed up a little bit – Kwagga certainly made an impact when he game on.
“But it just didn’t feel like we got any intensity in the second half, which is frustrating.”
Erasmus did praise the Italians, though, pinpointing their ability to legally slow down the Springboks’ attack at the breakdown in the contact areas.
“What they did well on our ball was legally slowing us down and holding us up in the tackles, which meant we attacked from slow ruck ball,” he said.
“And the tries they scored were very quick and we never got actually set and they got good momentum and that’s the frustrating part, is they were able to switch on and off from a break of three or four minutes because of an injury, which we couldn’t do.
“It’s obviously worrying to concede three tries.”
