Italy benefit from the brotherhood
IHAVE a half-baked theory that the comparative health and success of the Italian national rugby team very much depends on whether they have a set of brothers in their ranks. It seems a decent weather guide if nothing else.
Just recently Italy have picked up encouragingly and, hey presto, we have the muscular Cannone brothers, Niccolò and Lorenzo, who are beginning to provide the grunt that many Azzurri packs have lacked in recent years.
Neither is a giant by Test standards, but both make a hefty impact. At 24, Niccolo is the older and already has 26 caps, developing into a Trojan workhorse at lock, learning his trade while taking a few beatings.
Lorenzo is two inches shorter and two stone lighter at 6ft 3in and 17st and much more dynamic, indeed his speed off the base of the scrum at No.8 both in attack and defence is quite startling. I don’t want to saddle him with unfair comparisons but when I see him move around the park he conjures up images of Buck Shelford dishing out the hurt.
Although a brilliant age group international, his first taste of Test rugby was only a couple of months ago against Samoa but already he has become a go-to player with a huge future.
Talking of go-to players, Paolo Garbisi comes under that category although he is currently injured. How long before we see him at half-back with his younger and possibly even more talented brother Alessandro who has just broken into the squad.
Meanwhile let’s track back a little in time to when Italy secured the majority of their Championship wins thus far, when the Bergamasco brothers went toe to toe with the best in the world for a decade or more.
The sons of former Italy centre Arturo, it’s easy to forget just how good the Bergamasco brotherhood were and how ultra-reliable they were for club and country – both won two T14 titles with Stade and that doesn’t just happen by accident if you are an overseas player in France who can be discarded at the owner’s will.
Mauro was the original tough dynamic rough and tumble openside and won 106 caps although it’s outrageous that many choose to remember him firstly for his fairly disastrous 40 minutes as Italy’s stand in scrum-half against England at Twickenham in 2009.
Not lacking versatility, Mauro could have comfortably played Test rugby at centre and started on the wing on more than one occasion for Italy but he was no scrum-half and coach Nick Mallett really should have known better when his first four scrumhalves reported unfit for duty that week. Lion hearted Mauro was never going to say no but he needed to be protected from himself.
Mirco – taller, leaner and more dashing – was four years younger and a class act by any criteria and not only a star man but something of a poster boy, usually being selected for the cover shot of Stade’s famous nude calendar. He ended up with 89 caps and then at the end of his career, came out of retirement to play for two years with the Italy Rugby League team as their main goalkicker.
Not quite so celebrated at the start of, for want of a better word, the Bergamasco era were the Dallan brothers, Dennis and Manuel. Both backs, Dennis a rangy wing who could play full-back and Manuel a nuggety centre. Dennis was ever present during that historic debut season in 2000 and eventually won 42 caps. A talented semi-professional singer, he was asked to perform the Italian national anthem at the San Siro Stadium in 2009 when Italy played the All Blacks.
Manuel was a few years older, shorter and sturdier and a centre in the years leading into Italy’s introduction to the tournament. The two brothers though did get to play together in three of Italy’s four championship games in 2000 including the famous opening day win over Scotland.
Alas we never got to see twins Marcello and Massimo Cuttitta together in the tournament although few players did more to propel Italy into the tournament and both were in action that famous day in Grenoble in 1997 when Italy defeated France in a friendly, the game that convinced Vernon Pugh and the Five Nations committee that Italy must be included going forward.
Marcello was one of world’s very best wings in the 1990s – 5ft 11in and 15st of muscle and controlled aggression – and still holds the national record of 26 tries in his 54 Tests.
At 33 though he decided to call it quits after the 1999 World Cup but Massimo, an old-style prop with no urge to sprint around the park, managed that first Six Nations season before also stepping down, the proud winner of 69 caps.
Which brings us to the four Francescatos. Three – Rino, Nello and Bruno – were pretty much contemporaries in the Italy sides of the late 70s and early 80s, the team which began to separate itself from the other FIRA nations in Europe and suggest that Italy could play at a more elevated level.
All were centres and Rino was rated as possibly the best centre in the world by Carwyn James during his four-year spell coaching Rovigo. For a number of seasons Rino and Nello were a fixture in the Italy midfield.
And then, after the three of them had hung up their boots, came the kid, Ivan, who began his career as a livewire scrumhalf and was a big part of that emerging team of the 1990s and notably scored that brilliant try against the USA at RWC1991. Being a Francescato he did of course eventually move to centre but was lost to the game when he died tragically of a heart attack in 1999 aged 31.