Nice city shame about the team

As Six Nations' venues go, Rome takes some beating. Plenty of sight-seeing, shopping, Italian cuisine, fine hotels and not even the Eternal City is immune to the global warming of Irish bars, all of which is a 10 to 20-minute taxi ride or tram journey to the well-positioned Stadio Flaminio in the northern part of the city. And to cap it all, the Azzurri don't take much beating anymore either.

As regards the unique social mix that is the Championship, Rome only adds to the flavour. It was striking to note how many wives and girlfriends swelled the Irish travelling corps to an estimated 12,000, and also how many designer labels adorned the neat uncrushed bags at a crammed Ciampino Airport on Sunday.

It is also estimated that about £800,000 of lira had been eagerly snapped up by would-be Roman holidaymakers/rugby supporters and scarcely a lira could be found in any bureau de change by Wednesday or Thursday. Add in all the credit card expenditure and it's safe to say that the travel operators, bemused Roman hoteliers and restaurateurs and bar staff, will gladly welcome them back.

That Italy chose their capital ahead of Bologna as their championship venue adds further credence to their home fixtures and is helped by Roma's relative emergence in recent years as national champions. The Stadio Flaminio is nicely appointed, with a close-up armchair-like view of proceedings (in the press box at any rate).

That the Stadio Flaminio - listed, a little surprisingly, as a 40,500 capacity in the ERC guidebook - is not as immense as the other venues is no bad thing for the moment, besides which tickets for visiting fans are still relatively easy to come by.

Mind you, those who took the tram to Stadio Flaminio probably did so as much for safety reasons as anything else. Pedestrian crossings, such as they are, effectively provide no more than road decoration. The capacity to see out of both sides of your head and Maurice Greene sprinting abilities are a decided advantage bearing in mind the additional battalions of mopeds.

The natives themselves probably can't quite believe what hit them either. Rugby is well down their list of sporting priorities though it was encouraging to see La Gazzetta dello Sport augmenting live television coverage by devoting the bottom of its front page to Saturday's game as well as two pages inside.

How long such media interest will be maintained in the light of more setbacks such as Saturday's is a moot point. And the setbacks seem likely to continue for the time being. You can't help but feel that the French and home unions (England opposition especially) were a little tardy in delaying Italy's entry to the round table, by about three years.

A good team grew old together and the structures, financial resources and playing strength are not there to replace them. Had the Italians been admitted three or four years ago they would assuredly have been better placed to obtain more competitive results and hence more of a feel-good factor. For even in 1997 and 1998 aside from beating Ireland twice, beating and drawing with Argentina, and overcoming the Scots, they only lost by 2320 to Wales and 23-15 to England.

HOWEVER, in the last two years they have lost 20 out of 24 games, their rare wins being against the might of Uruguay, Spain, Romania and, of course, Scotland on the day of their historic entry into the Six Nations last season - the Azzurri's only win in their last 10 internationals. In this time they have also been hit for half-centuries half a dozen times, by South Africa, England (twice), Ireland, Fiji and the All Blacks, as well as conceding centuries in a 101-0 defeat to the Springboks and a 101-3 World Cup defeat to the All Blacks.

A host of fine established internationals such as Matt Pini (though quite why, given his form with Newport, is a mystery), Paolo Vaccari, the Cuttitta brothers, Walter Cristofoletto and Massimo Giovanelli have left the scene and have not been adequately replaced. Saturday reminded Italy of the postDiego Dominguez doomsday scenario, for it was a fifth successive defeat this season without their talisman. La Gazzetta's preview summed up the mood: Dominguez in dubbio, Johnstone invoca un miracolo.

In one of the most dispirited, defeatist post-match press conferences of all time by a losing coach, at different times Brad Johnstone bemoaned his team's terrible discipline and in turn the lack of discipline at club level, the lack of number eights, the lack of goalkickers, the lack of centres, the lack of a big middle-of-theline jumper, and the lack of time he has with the Italian squad, at which point he just waved his arms plaintively.

Of his two forays into Italian, one was positive, "at least our scrummage was forte." However, a mere two words in Italian after more than a year in the job won't have endeared him to the Italian rugby cognoscenti. Nor has it gone without notice that Nick Mallett, who has experience of Italian rugby, is fluent in the language.

Whether it be Johnstone, Mallett or one of the other star names to have graced the relative halcyon days of Italian club football when Fiat and Benetton were benefactors, there doesn't seem much light on the horizon.

The Italian A team have been reasonably competitive but have still lost six matches on the bounce, but the truly scary statistic is the Italian under-21 side's last six championship results: 10-61 v Ireland, 0-74 for France, 13-78 v England, 7-95 v Ireland, 0-95 v Wales and 10-72 v Scotland.

When guessing how long it would take for Italy to be a true force in the championship, Warren Gatland estimated two or three years, and then quickly changed that to five.

And, sadly perhaps, the rest.