Day a little man stood tall in land of the giants
Amid all the gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands around Wales today I hope there is also some space to heap praise on the victory of the little man over the giants. That is not a phrase I use to describe Italy beating Wales, but how one of the shining new lights of this Six Nations, Ange Capuozzo, finally brought to an end a run of 36 successive defeats for Italy in this great championship.
A week after announcing his arrival on the world stage with two tries as a replacement in the home defeat to Scotland, he found a way to win a game that looked like it was just going to drift away from his side in Cardiff. Those dancing feet, that turn of speed, that sidestep – oh, that sidestep – and then the perfect inside pass to allow Eduardo Padovani to cross for the winning try.
At 22, the rugby world is at the feet of this little magician. I was proud to prove that you didn’t have to be massive to make your way in this game and he is carrying on that tradition. At 5ft 8in tall he is a little bigger than I was, but at 71kg he is almost a full stone lighter than me.
I know most Welsh fans, and especially the Welsh defence coach Gethin Jenkins, will have been disappointed to see Capuozzo inspire that score, but you really do have to admire the way in which his rugby brain is wired to have the courage to take a chance like that and create a try that will forever remain on the Italian rugby showreel.
That moment stopped the rot in the Six Nations for the Italians and is bound to spark a major debate in Welsh rugby on where this team is going under Wayne Pivac. I was a bit skeptical about his selection process for this game. For me, you pick your best team all the time in a Championship. There was a shot at third place, but we didn’t even get near delivering that.
The first thing was to secure the win and the second was to do so with a bonus point. After it took so long to get a toe hold in the Italian territory in the first half it seemed as though everyone was just waiting for the visitors to crumble. They didn’t and we couldn’t find a way to unlock their tight defence.
That’s what worries me slightly, Ireland scored nine tries against them this season, albeit in slightly bizarre circumstances, but England, Scotland and Ireland all managed five. This is no vintage Italian team, yet they managed to come up with a vintage display and long-awaited result.
It is all very well talking about building strength in depth, but that surely has to come outside major championships. It is on the Six Nations and at the World Cup that coaches, their teams and players get judged. A second finish of fifth place in three championships is not the kind of consistency we were hoping for as we build towards the 2023 World Cup.
It has been a difficult period with so many senior players out injured for so long. But it strikes me that we are no further on in our understandwonderful ing of what the best Welsh team currently is than we were a year or more ago. Worse still, we appear to have lost any guile and cutting edge behind the scrum.
Pivac went through more than 30 players in the five games and just never seemed convinced by any of his selections or combinations. That has to change by the time we get to next year’s Six Nations.
How he is going to approach the three summer Tests in South Africa is anyone’s guess. I just hope he is able to take the biggest and most experienced squad he can lay his hands on.
I’ve been where the Welsh players were yesterday and it is not a nice feeling. The rest of the rugby world will be looking at the result and wondering what is going on. They will feel we are vulnerable.
It takes a lot of soul searching and hard work to recover from a result like that. Not because it was Italy, but because it was at home and it was a second defeat in a row on our turf.
Sometimes a defeat like that can have a galvanising effect. I hope it will rally the troops, rather than make them go into their shells. They need to face down this unhappy shot of adversity and come out fighting. They won’t want to feel like this again and each and every one of them now needs to fight for their international survival.
But let’s not beat ourselves up too much. Why not turn things around and focus on the way the Italians must be feeling. They will have gained far more out of winning than we will lose out of being defeated. The Six Nations needs all teams to be strong and competitive and perhaps this will be the catalyst for that.
If they can find a few more Ange Capuozzos in the next few seasons then maybe we will get to see a few more tries like the one that won it for them. Now that would mean something good comes out of this defeat.
Having ended the Six Nations on a bit of a downer, I just hope all the internationals can now go back to the regions and finish on a high with them. Welsh rugby thrives on good news and positive results and they have been few and far between at regional level this season.
At least every player at the Dragons, Cardiff, Ospreys and Scarlets now knows that the door is more ajar than it was before this weekend if they are hoping to force their way into the international selection debate.
“At 22, the rugby world is at the feet of Ange Capuozzo, the little magician”