After decades of indifference, soccer-mad Italy is finally falling in love with its rugby team after they managed two Six Nations wins in the same season for the first time.
Their 23-20 win over Wales on the weekend — two weeks after a 37-17 victory against Scotland — sealed their most successful campaign with one home game against Ireland still to come.
News of their success was splashed over the front pages of the country’s sporting press. La Gazzetta dello Sport hailed the team as the ”Lions of Italy”.
Inside the papers, there the players were again — not just in news articles but also in adverts for coffee and clothes, and promoting a Roman radio station.
Players who were just names in a match report five weeks ago have become recognisable public figures, stopped in the street for autographs and spontaneously applauded by fellow travellers at Rome’s Fiumicino airport when they returned from their win over Scotland two weeks ago – their first away success since joining the competition seven years ago.
But it is not just results on the pitch that have raised rugby’s profile in Italy.
Promotes values
The growing disenchantment with football, on the back of last year’s match-fixing scandal and the death of a police officer in rioting at a Serie A match early last month, has also played its part, putting rugby on a pedestal as a sport that promotes values that soccer seems to have lost.
”Rugby is a hard sport that represents without doubt the real sporting values of fair play and respect for one’s opponent that should exist in all sporting disciplines,” said Italy’s Sports Minister Giovanna Melandri on visiting the team following the win over Scotland.
Melandri was one of the ministers who last month hammered out the new anti-hooligan plan designed to crack down on violence at the country’s football grounds.
”By winning in Scotland, this team has given huge satisfaction to our country,” she continued.
”But above all I want to underline how it has exported to the world the ethical values of our sport.”
Swapping songs
Italians also delighted in scenes around the Stadio Flaminio and throughout Rome as fans of both sides mixed amicably, swapping songs and drinks — a far cry from the poisonous atmosphere that exists at many of the nation’s big soccer occasions.
For now, Italy’s rugby players have never had it so good, even though most of them have had to travel to France to further their club careers. Their continuing popularity will depend on continuing success and the growth of the sport as a grassroots level.
Here, warns scrumhalf Alessandro Troncon, Italy lags well behind some of its Six Nations rivals.
”England has one million players, we have 55 000,” he says.
”In France, rugby is so rooted that players have a lot of social prestige, more in clubs than in internationals.
”In Italy, we must find a balance between internationals and [club] championships,” he adds, pointing out that while the Flaminio is sold out for Six Nations matches, Sunday club rugby is poorly attended.
The financial incentives for Italian youngsters to choose rugby over football also make it a tough challenge.
Players in the country’s Super 10 league earn an average of â,¬50 000 a year, less than the £90 000 pounds their counterparts in England’s rugby Premiership receive and a fraction of the fees Serie A players can command.
Italian rugby’s reliance on the cramped and old-fashioned Flaminio as a stage for its most important games has also been a bone of contention — and one that some Italians feel is hindering the game’s progress.
”We need the Rome administration to move from words to deeds, to get on with the project to renovate the Flaminio and enlarge its capacity of 38 000 to 40 000 seats,” said Italy’s team manager, Carlo Cecchinato.
”We need to feel that we are all part of one, big project with the clubs.” — Reuters