Wales can’t take Azzurri come up with the correct

ANYONE who has ever played Trivial Pursuit will know there are few things worse in life than being told the question you need to answer for a piece of pie is easy.

Then out it comes, a brute of a poser from the History section that a brains trust of Dan Snow, David Starkey, Lucy Worsley and Simon Schama would struggle to get their heads around, or maybe one from the field of Sport and Leisure, perhaps asking what the first Spanish dog to be fitted with contact lenses failed to see. Answer: The car that killed him.

Anyway, let’s see what Wales are faced with in Cardiff tomorrowafternoon.

All week, they have been told the challenge awaiting them doesn’t amount to much, Italy having conceded 136 points and 18 tries during losses to England, Ireland and France over the opening rounds of the Six Nations.

Wales won’t have any difficulty answering whatever these gents ask of them, will they? That’s the thinking, anyway. There again, they have made 10 personnel changes and when they have shaken things up on such a scale in the past they have struggled.

Does such a selection show a lack of respect to Italy as their former scrumhalf Paul Griffen suggested this week?

“Why do Wales have to do this?” he asked in an interview with the BBC.

“In Italy it will be seen as disrespectful because they’re not playing their best team.

“Italy will have greater incentive now.” Fair points. But respect has to be earned and the Azzurri haven’t won in this competition since 2015, which is no basis to expect anything from anyone.

Even so, you can imagine their head coach Conor O’Shea telling his charges before kick-off: “This lot don’t rate us. They see this game as the opportunity to make wholesale changes. Let’s make them pay. Capisci?”

It’s hard to imagine Wales coming unstuck, but far more settled teams than this one have made heavy weather of sending Italian sides packing.

In 2014, for instance, Warren Gatland fielded a pack made up of Paul James, Richard Hibbard, Adam Jones, Luke Charteris, Alun Wyn Jones, Dan Lydiate, Taulupe Faletau and Justin Tipuric, yet his side won by only eight points, needing to fall back on Leigh Halfpenny’s boot to get the job done.

A year later, the margin of victory was halved in a friendly.

So, Gatland knows the Italians can be a pain in the nether regions, all the more so if their skipper Sergio Parisse decides to turn it on. When he makes such a call, there is little anyone can do, for the No. 8 has long been a player apart.

He is getting on now, with 35 candles on his next birthday cake, but skill is the last thing to leave a sportsperson and the Italian captain still has lashings of it.

Should his side lose – and Wales are 1-33 to win this weekend – it would leave Parisse contemplating his 100th defeat in Test rugby when Scotland visit Rome next Saturday. Such a statistic insults the talent of an all-time great player.

But Wales can’t afford to be sentimental.

After being denied possession for long periods by Ireland, they have brought in James Davies and Tipuric on the flanks, ball pilferers both.

Earlier this season, Davies passed the 100-turnover mark in the Guinness PRO14 and its previous incarnation, the PRO12. That’s 43 more than any other player since his debut. That’s also more than a bit remarkable.

Wales are fortunate to be able to draft in such quality.

Indeed, calling up Davies to sort out a turnover issue must be a bit like being able to summon a peak-era Red Adair to put out a blazing oil well (kids, ask your dad).

And it isn’t as if Tipuric, a master at holding up opponents, is a slouch in the art of effecting possession steals himself.

Potentially, these two could cause the Italians all kinds of headaches at the breakdown, but as Steve Hansen pointed out during his time as Wales’s team boss, sometimes a coach can sort out one problem with his selection and expose another.

“It’s a bit like cleaning windows,” said Hansen.

“You focus on shining up one area,