Hope springs Eternal from Rome club

PADDY AGNEWhears how the Irish model, through the Magner's League and Heineken Cup, provides the blueprint for the development of the game in Italy.

IT IS Friday afternoon down at “Unione Rugby Capitolina”, one of Italy’s top rugby clubs based in a handsome oasis of green just off the busy Via Tor di Quinto in Rome’s northern suburbs. Fifteen years ago, your correspondent used to make regular trips to Via Tor di Quinto because that was where SS Lazio and a certain Paul Gascoigne used to train.

In those days, there was no sign of rugby activity on the road, for the good reason that Rugby Capitolina was only founded only in 1996. Despite the pouring rain, however, the club is a hive of activity on this miserable afternoon as many of its 260-plus under-13s prepare for training.

In at least one typically boisterous and rowdy dressingroom, where South African, All Black and British Lion shirts all mix in with the club’s own strip, the kids are raring to go. Before they go out to face the downpour, however, I ask them if any of them ever thought of becoming a professional rugby player. To my surprise, just about every hand in the dressingroom goes up. Rugby is a serious deal around here.

LEONARDO SAYShe has been playing since he was five, largely because his dad was a player. Bruno, however, whose parents come from Burkina Faso, was spotted one day at a football kick-around and invited to try out rugby. Now he is so involved that, when asked if he will be watching the Six Nations games the next day, he responds it would be a "crime" not to watch the big games. Another of their pals, Lorenzo, says he first took up rugby on the advice of the family doctor who prescribed some serious sports pursuit.

These kids, members of a club that did not even exist 15 years ago, are the face of an Italian rugby movement that, despite last weekend’s painful events at Twickenham, is growing in numbers and influence by the day.

In 1981, there were 16,422 registered players in Italy. Today their number comes to over 65,000 whilst the rugby Federation, FIR, hopes to top the 100,000 figure by 2011.

Given there are more than seven million registered footballers (soccer) in Italy or that there are 2.1 million rugby players in Britain, then this number might seem small. Yet, the energies currently flowing through the Italian rugby movement are such that technical co-ordinator Francesco Ascione is willing to make a very bold prediction: “I’m confident in the next 10 years or so, we’ll win the Six Nations championship, that’s our objective.”

Not if you keep playing Mauro Bergamasco at scrumhalf, one might be tempted to reply. (Ascione was speaking on the day before the England-Italy game.)

Yet, mishaps notwithstanding, there is no doubting the seriousness of Italian rugby intentions. For example, FIR, recession times notwithstanding, has just set aside a €2.5 million budget for four live-in training “academies” for 120 under-18 and under-19 players.

Based in northern and central Italy, these schools provide a preparation for would-be rugby professionals, comparable to that offered by youth team schemes at major Serie A soccer clubs. The players not only train five days per week but they also receive technical, tactical, medical and psychological instruction whilst they continue their school education.

Ascione, a Neapolitan who both played for and coached Naples team Partenope Rugby, bases his optimistic view of the future on some very realistic considerations. Last year, he says, Italy lost to England’s Under-20 team by just six points and that notwithstanding the huge gulf in player numbers. Or look at it this way, he says, France joined the Five Nations in 1910 but did not actually win the tournament until 1955, adding: “We hope to do it much quicker than that.”

There is, of course, a rather large elephant stuck right there in the middle of the Italian rugby livingroom. That elephant is called “calico”, soccer to you. In some ways, even the very location of FIR’s national headquarters, deep in the heart of the Curva Nord of the Stadio Olimpico in Rome, makes the point.

In what seems like a perfect metaphor for Italian rugby, the FIR head office is literally overshadowed by the “Olimpico”, a stadium that has written some important pages in Italian football history. With a wry smile, Ascione says: “We’re used to living in the shadow of soccer.”

THE PROBLEMis not lost on Italy coach, South African Nick Mallett, who is the first to concede, in rugby terms, Italy is clearly still a minnow, adding with a touch of realism: "We're not competing with soccer but rather with basketball and volleyball, that's where we've got to look."

Ascione puts it another way, saying that with a population of almost 60 million, there is room for Italian rugby to progress without having to take on the Goliath that is “calico”.

He points out that yet again this year, tickets for Italy’s home games have long been sold out. (Having chased tickets for various Irish friends and relatives, your correspondent can confirm this.)

Furthermore, says Ascione, it is not just the Six Nations matches that sell out. Italy’s three home warm-up games last autumn against Australia, Argentina and the Pacific Islanders (despite defeats by 20-30, 14-22 and 17-25 respectively) were all 25-30,000 sell-out fixtures.

In an Italian sporting firmament where the image of sports such as soccer, cycling and athletics is constantly besmirched by tales of drugs, dope, match-fixing and corruption, there is plenty of room and enthusiasm for rugby, a sport that for many Italians still incorporates “true” sporting values such as “fair play”.

That point is echoed by Daniele Pacini, senior director and one of the original founders of Rugby Capitolina, who says that for today’s Italians, one of the major attractions of rugby is not so much the game itself as the “values” it represents.

When he and a few friends decided to found the club in 1996, one of their major concerns was to create an environment that would attract parents and kids alike, a club that would provide a meeting place, somewhere to be comfortable and socialise.

Sitting in the cosy club restaurant over an excellent plate of ravioli, one can only conclude this part of the mission has been well and truly accomplished. The restaurant, rainy Friday afternoon and recession times notwithstanding, is doing an excellent trade. So much so that not only players, friends and relatives but also locals from the area now use it.

The club has progressed on more than the culinary front, however. Twelve players from the current first team (which plays in Italy’s Super 10 League) have come up through the youth team ranks. One of these is Giulio Toniolatti, the 25-year-old scrumhalf who had the difficult task of substituting the hapless Mauro Bergamasco at half-time in Italy’s painful 36-11 loss to England at Twickenham last Saturday.

Intriguingly, Pacini points out that when kids arrive at the club, they are already behind their Anglo-Saxon counterparts. In an age of the computer/TV prompted, sedentary lifestyle, in which Italian schools provide practically no sport and in which street football or games in the park are a thing of the past, seven- and eight-year-old kids have to be taught everything – how to run, fall, throw the ball.

One of the first things the kids do at Capitolina is learn to roll around on the ground whilst they have to quickly get accustomed to the idea of physical contact. That is not part of our DNA, says Pacini.

CLEARLY RUGBYCapitolina, like Italian rugby, has much further to travel. For the game to progress in Italy, further media exposure is absolutely essential. As things stand, rugby is a game that attracts the attention of the Italian sports public for just two months of the year, the two months of the Six Nations Championship obviously: "The Six Nations is fundamental. Thanks to the huge media coverage it generates, rugby has emerged from a state of semi-clandestinity in Italy. In the past, it was a well-kept secret that was passed from father to son," says Pacini.

For that reason, just about everyone in Italian rugby from coach Mallett to club directors like Pacini argue that the next logical step will be the formation of two new club teams, made up of a fusion of existing Italian clubs, which might prove competitive in competitions like the Magners League and the Heineken Cup – provided, of course, that they finally get invited to participate.

Last December, one of Italy’s best-known teams, Treviso Benetton, was humiliated in a 68-8 thrashing by Ospreys in Swansea in a Heineken Cup encounter, underlining one more time the need to create new and genuinely competitive Italian club teams. In this context, Italian rugby looks to Irish rugby for inspiration for the way forward.

Mallett puts it this way: “The Irish took some very good decisions after the advent of professionalism, going into the provinces helped, getting the Ulster, Munster and Leinster system going and concentrating as many of their internationals in Ireland. The Irish could afford to be competitive on the job market and make sure that they keep an O’Driscoll or an O’Gara in Ireland even though sides like Leicester, Toulouse and Stade Francais would have loved to get those guys . . .”

Mallett and others argue that Italy now badly needs to create (at least two) strong club sides that can not only compete with the Munsters and Leinsters but which also ensure Italy’s best players do not move abroad attracted by the higher wages offered by French and English players.

Currently, as many as 14 of Italy’s national team squad, players such as captain Sergio Parisse and the Bergamasco brothers, Mirco and Mauro, (at Stade Francais) play their rugby for English, French or Irish clubs (secondrow, Antonio Del Fava at Ulster).

In terms of financial resources, Italian clubs still lag far behind. Pacini points out that his Capitolina club have a €1.6 million annual budget for the first team as opposed to the €12-15 million budget of top-flight French and English clubs. A very good Italian club salary would be €60,000 as compared to the €300,000-plus salaries offered to the top players by English, French and Irish teams.

Pacini hopes Capitolina will be one of a number of Roman club teams which combine resources to form a serious side. He points out that having Rome consistently on the Magners League/Heineken fixture list might prove attractive. Given the Irish invasion that is about to hit the Eternal City this weekend, he might have a point there.