SIX NATIONS INTERVIEW WITH NICK MALLETT: Gerry Thornleytalks to Italy's coach who has to grapple with the changes wrought by the ELVs and structural weaknesses in the domestic game
ASIDE FROM being one of the elite coaches in the game globally, Nick Mallett is also an articulate multi-lingual spokesperson for the Italian game. As at the World Cup draw and presumably at most opportunities in between, Mallett used last week’s Six Nations launch to again float the idea of a couple of regional Italian sides competing in the Magners League and the Heineken Cup. No better man.
The Italian coach is grateful the likes of Leicester and Stade Francais pay handsomely for the services of his prop Martin Castrogiovanni and his captain and number eight Sergio Parisse. As with Argentina, the more Italian players based aboard with leading clubs in Europe the better for the Azzurri.
What clearly annoys him is that the Italian clubs import too many foreign players who are past their best and end up in Italy because they are not considered good enough for the major European Leagues, all the more so after observing Italy’s two Heineken Cup representatives, Treviso and Calvisano, draw another blank from their dozen outings.
“It just doesn’t make sense to me at all to have an internal competition where whoever gets into the Heineken Cup have won one out of 24 games in the last two years and have often lost by 40 or 50 points,” he says with a weariness bordering on anger.
The Italian Federation are pressing to have a couple of regional or composite sides competing in both the Magners League and the Heineken Cup, and while he knows many will fear such indigenous outfits might only be beaten by more, he refutes this.
“So, they’re losing anyway. And if they’re losing anyway with overseas’ players, why don’t you at least use this as an opportunity to give experience to Italian players? They can say that they will lose by 100 but I categorically deny that. I think a young Italian player would know this is another step up in his chances of getting an international cap. He comes out of an academy, he goes to an Italian club, which can be amateur or semi-professional or whatever you like to call it, and then we have two franchises, two regions or whatever playing in the Magners League or Heineken Cup, which are made up, the majority of them, of Italian players. I am convinced those guys will give their eye-teeth to perform well.
“If you just take the psychological aspect of a guy of 32 who has come for a two-year contract at the end of his Super 14 career, and is playing for Calvisano, and they’ve lost their first two European Cup games, I mean how much interest has that guy got in going to the Scarlets or Leicester and putting his body on the line? He’s got bugger all. So if you put an Italian who knows he might have a possibility of playing in the Six Nations, at least he’s going to tackle, which is the first bloody objective.”
A classic case in point of how the Italian system serves to damage the Italian national team is at outhalf, where many of the clubs have filled the position with overseas imports. Thus there has never been a ready-made replacement for Diego Dominguez. Last season, with his emphasis on the Italian need for a defensively strong number 10, Mallett opted to convert centre Andrea Masi into his outhalf, rather than Ramiro Pez. This season, he is giving the role to the 25-year-old Andrea Marcato, who at least is playing there regularly for Treviso, although Mallett still sees the Six Nations as a game-by-game, work in progress as Marcato is being asked to play a different game from the one he plays with his club side.
“They (Treviso) have a more defensive game, one much more orientated around kicking. You do need to kick but you (also) have to hold on to the ball. If you kick the ball away, that your forwards have struggled to win, you’re just basically giving possession away and you’re going to be tackling for 70 minutes rather than for 40 minutes if you hold on to it.”
Mallett is not claiming the post-Dominguez riddle has been solved, and the need for a top-class outhalf is all the more acute as the ELVs have effectively taken away Italy’s primary source of go-forward ball and, indeed, points over the last few years.
“Italy’s strength was in their tight phases, winning good scrum ball, winning good lineout ball, turning good lineout ball into good driving maul ball, getting penalties, either kicking a penalty over or kicking it into touch, winning the ball and driving it again, scoring a try. I mean, Castrogiovanni is the leading try scorer for Italy over the last five Six Nations. I’m exaggerating obviously, but he scored three last year. So you’re taking away our major scoring potential, so that requires our nine and 10 to control the game more, to vary the game more, to use different solutions to try and break down defences, and it’s very, very complicated. So he’s got a huge amount of responsibility.”
Italy had an ominous November, for although level at 20-all entering the last 10 minutes against Australia, they played poorly in both of the subsequent defeats to Argentina and the Pacific Islands. At home to Ireland next Sunday week in the second round, Mallett fears his side are up against it in the tournament opener away to England next Saturday.
“You’ve also got to take into account whether our defence is as good as New Zealand’s and South Africa’s, which clearly I don’t think any Northern Hemisphere team’s defence is . . . It’s a very, very tough game for us. If England win as much ball as they did against those two teams and retain possession and we don’t tackle as aggressively we’re in for a tough afternoon.”
He inserts Wales as tournament favourites on the form guide of last November. “But between Scotland, France, Ireland and England, it’s very difficult to call who’s going to win.”
