Crowley so proud of side despite home defeat

ITALY head coach Kieran Crowley felt that yesterday’s performance was a major step forward for his team, despite the Azzurri suffering their 36th consecutive Six Nations defeat. However, he also expressed disappointment that much of his players’ good work was undone by defensive lapses.

“It was probably the area which let us down,” he said. “In our last two games we’ve defended really well but we missed too many one-on-one tackles out there today, which allowed them to win the advantage line.

“We conceded two tries from counter-attack and two tries from turnovers so that just wasn’t good enough. That’s an area we will certainly have to look at. We dominated field position but couldn’t make that count on the scoreboard.

“On the flip side, I thought our attack was a lot better today, we played the game in the right areas – but you have to get a combination of attack and defence, and we didn’t find that balance.

“The really pleasing thing is that we did get periods when we were trying to play from an attack perspective and hopefully that can take us forward from a confidence point of view, and hopefully we can build on in our next game against Wales, then through the summer and autumn internationals, so that when we come to next year’s Six Nations we’ve got players who have all that experience from another eight or nine Test matches under their belts.

“I’d also say that a couple of bounces didn’t go our way out there today, and you’ve got to have the rub of the green at times as well – but that’s the nature of the game.”