1
Italy will hurt 'more than ever' after France defeat - O'Shea
By Ben Spratt
Conor O'Shea says Italy will be hurting "more than ever" after passing up several chances in their Six Nations defeat to France.
The Azzurri ended the campaign with five losses from five matches but should have capitalised on numerous opportunities in the 25-14 reverse at the hands of Les Bleus on Saturday.
Debutant Marco Zanon was particularly guilty of passing up chances and Italy were made to pay.
Coach O'Shea praised his side's mentality yet acknowledged that this latest Rome defeat was particularly painful for his side.
"It's really difficult, really difficult for the guys," he told ITV Sport. "We'll dust ourselves down and say that, a lot of the time in this Six Nations, we've given a huge amount.
"The competitiveness of this squad is going forward through all the things, but we should have won today. We had opportunity after opportunity after opportunity. We showed fight.
"We didn't execute - that's the bottom line. But if we continue to play with that level of intensity, it'll come. At the moment, wow, it's hard."
With captain Sergio Parisse perhaps playing his last Six Nations match, O'Shea praised of the impact of the result on his senior men: "These guys have an unbelievable mentality to keep coming back.
"They'll hurt more than ever tonight, but they'll come back."
Even with Camille Chat in the sin bin for the last 10 minutes, Italy could not close the gap to France and instead saw the brilliant Damian Penaud seal an away victory.
Parisse added: "Honestly, I'm not thinking about myself and whether this is my last game or not, it's just really disappointing.
"We're frustrated because we managed the game, we had massive opportunities and we were a little bit unlucky as well sometimes."
Trending on RugbyPass
2
Six players Rassie Erasmus must hand Springbok debuts to in 2025
3
Ex-England flyhalf says All Blacks scared
4
Gloucester respond to complaints over Russian flag
5
Latest Comments
we need a damaging 12 that takes 2 men to tackle that will take pressure off the 10 while also creating space for the 10 and 13 . Leicester is the only guy that fits the mould . The next thing is " will he be able to develop a good offload " ? .
for 13 Joey manu has more x factor then reiko and jordie put togeather . he's got one season in japan before he looks to come home . he's a dark horse but his skill set is something the All Blacks don't have . if he comes home and lights up the npc in a game or 2 , id love to see him fast tracked and come off the bench for the All Blacks and thrown into the deep end to see if he can swim . Just to see if he's worth the time and effort to develop further . We all saw how good sualii did for the wallabies and joey manu is just as good as sualii . He's safe under the high ball , a solid defender , has a master offload , and he's fast and strong .
he fits the mould for razor's offload tactics .
Plus reiko and jordie have had the 12 & 13 for how long and I haven't seen anything special from either of them .
Go to commentsRussia has taken their freedom. Dying for nato won't change that.
Go to comments