State of the Nation: Italy

With the November internationals now done and dusted, we look at the state of affairs in each of the competing nations. Next up, Italy.

2017 will be a year which everyone associated with the Azzurri would want to forget in a hurry as they only managed to win one out of the 11 Tests they played in during the year.

That is a woeful return by anybody’s standards and does not reflect well on their head coach, Conor O’Shea, who came into the job in March 2016 on a wave of optimism when he replaced Jacques Brunel after the 2016 Six Nations campaign.

But despite promising much, O’Shea has failed to deliver the goods and the Azzurri have shown little signs of improvement under his watch. O’Shea’s record as head coach has been poor and with him in charge, Italy have won only four out of 22 Tests and three of those were against tier-two nations.

Much has been said about their game-plan with O’Shea favouring attractive running rugby. But that option hasn’t reaped the rewards and his players are yet to deliver a performance where they dominate their opposition for a full 80 minutes with that style of play.

The Six Nations campaign was one to forget and they finished with the wooden spoon in that competition for the 12th time in 18 seasons after losing all five of their matches.

Being without important players like inspriational skipper Sergio Parisse and exciting centre Michele Campagnaro at crucial stages of the year did not help the their cause. In fact, Parisse’s absence, in the mid-year internationals against Scotland, Fiji and Australia and the loss of Campagnaro to injury for their November internationals proved yet again that there is little depth in the Azzurri‘s ranks.

Their November campaign yielded that solitary victory – a hard-fought 19-10 triumph over Fiji in Catania – which ended a nine-match losing streak and although they were competitive for large periods in their 31-15 defeat to Argentina in Florence, they looked out of their depth in their 35-6 loss to South Africa in Padova.

With their 2017 campaign a thing of the past now, another underwhelming Six Nations campaign could cost O’Shea his job. The Azzurri will find the going tough in that tournament, however, as they are at home against defending champions England in their tournament opener and then only play one more game in Italy – their final one against Scotland – during the rest of the competition.

By David Skippers