Sergio Parisse exclusive: Legendary back-row lauds ‘all-time great’ Courtney Lawes

With the EPCR Investec Champions Cup moving into its second round, Planet Rugby’s James While caught up with Italy legend Sergio Parisse, now Toulon’s skills coach, as his side travels to Franklin’s Gardens to take on Northampton Saints.

The soft hands and giant frame of Parisse is missing from European rugby for the first time in 20 years, but now his role is that of honing lineouts, instructing rucks and tweaking scrummages as he continues his love affair with rugby and Toulon.

New challenge

“Yeah, of course I’m missing being on the pitch!” Parisse said.

“And yes, there’s moments when my feet twitch in the coaches box and I want to run on and do what I’ve done for two decades, but that’s finally over and I am coming to terms with that.

“In fairness, I am loving the new life and challenge. Plus there’s fewer ice baths!

“Rugby is all about learning, and I am enjoying my education as a coach. You see a different perspective up in the stands, but I believe having recent experiences of the players and teams we face is a bonus for me and the other coaches.”

Toulon lost in the dying seconds to Exeter Chiefs last Saturday, when a remarkable scrum penalty was given against the home team.

It looked for all money that the visitors had transgressed and Marcus Street had capitulated under pressure, but the French side were deemed to have infringed and two minutes later Exeter went over to seal the deal.

“That was a classic case of scrum smarts,” Parisse said. “We had a big advantage in the tight and we knew that, but going for broke when in the middle of the pitch left us open to what we consider may have been a misinterpretation.

“Scrum laws are so complex these days that if you attack hard and get the smallest detail wrong, you leave yourself open to that interpretation and we were not smart in the way we approached it.

“A more passive effort to hold the drive and to clear safely would have secured the points and both the coaches and the skipper, Charles Ollivon, have discussed this in depth.

“We have to learn from moments like that, and of course, maximising our red zone return, and I don’t think we did that particularly well. Our focus is on the 79 minutes we had available to increase the score, rather than one micro incident that ultimately hurt us badly. Losing Baptiste Serin was a big blow as we’d already removed our nine, so maybe we lost a little direction at half-back too.”

Colossal Courtney

Parisse also spoke of his admiration for former England flanker Courtney Lawes, who he believes can be considered one of the game’s “all-time greats.”

“We often talk about ‘wasting energies’. The game is tiring enough without doing anything that takes energy from you and gives little or no reward. We travel to Saints this Friday and we will come up against a man I’ve faced many times in my career, the peerless Courtney Lawes, and the England flank is brilliant in this regard,” the former Italy back-row said.

“Courtney is noted for his jackal presence of course, but the most impressive thing about his play is his ability to select his moment to attack a ruck ball. He wastes no energy at all, he knows precisely when his time is and he strikes brilliantly to rob the team in possession.

“He’s an incredibly smart operator in this regard, a giant of a man I respect and like greatly, and, for someone that is in the all-time great bracket, one of the most humble and grounded men you’ll ever meet.

“We had many personal duels in the lineout and breakdown, a formidable opponent and someone that I enjoyed as a person both on and off the pitch. If you got the better of him at Test level, you knew you’d had a great day at the office. He is absolutely relentless and wonderfully accurate, whether in his tackle work or his breakdown nuisance.

“We’ve spent a lot of time looking at how Saints play around the contact area and how crucial their loose forwards are, Courtney especially, a man we need to isolate, get on the floor and out of open play. They thrive on fast recycles, and we will go hard at them to disrupt and to also leverage our strengths, especially in the set piece.

Running rugby

Parisse added: “The Gardens is always a treat to visit, a perfect surface and we’re hoping the weather stays fine so both teams can put on a spectacle.

“Saints are playing wonderful wide running rugby at the moment and we admire their ambition in attack, knowing we’ve got a task on our hands to cut down their brilliant running work at the back.

“We are on a journey to rebuild Toulon in the Champions Cup. Last weekend was a setback, I am not going to candy-coat that, so a result or points of some sort are absolutely key for us against Saints.

“But the bigger picture is that we learn our ‘smarts’ from the experience against Chiefs and emerge a more selective and intelligent side as a result.”

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