Parisse to equal O'Driscoll record
Sergio Parisse will equal Brian O'Driscoll's appearance record for the Five and Six Nations when he leads out Italy against Scotland in Rome on Saturday.
The inspirational number eight is set for his 65th outing in the championship, drawing him level with Ireland's iconic former centre.
Head coach Conor O'Shea has made only one change to his starting XV from the side that went down 38-14 in Wales last weekend, with Gloucester flanker Jake Polledri set for his international debut. The injured Maxime Mbanda is the man to make way.
The Azzurri have endured another disappointing campaign and are already destined to take home the wooden spoon after four defeats from four and not so much as a losing bonus point to their name heading into the final fixture.
Italy team: Matteo Minozzi, Tommaso Benvenuti, Giulio Bisegni, Tommaso Castello, Mattia Bellini, Tommaso Allan, Marcello Violi; Andrea Lovotti, Leonardo Ghiraldini, Simone Ferrari, Alessandro Zanni, Dean Budd, Sebastian Negri, Jake Polledri, Sergio Parisse (c).
Substitutes: Oliviero Fabiani, Nicola Quaglio, Tiziano Pasquali, Abraham Steyn, Giovanni Licata, Guglielmo Palazzani, Carlo Canna, Jayden Hayward.
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Great point. It would be terrible to have a card for poor tackling cost the all blacks a world cup. Oh hi all blacks captain Sam Cane, how you going?
Go to commentsI like Andy’s critical approach to all hot issues especially when it comes to the rugby big “bosses”. However, sorry Andy, I don’t support your “we shouldn’t be questioning the integrity of Karl Dickson or any other official”. May I ask why? They do have a lot of responsibility, but they are people like us with all their sins and weaknesses. We have to respect their decision during the games, but why they became untouchable afterwards and people cannot even criticize them and the ones, who does express their concerns, got punished for publicly analyzing their mistakes and asking questions. If they believe they did right, there shouldn’t be a problem for any of the refs to answer these “questions” publicly. I don’t really remember such cases. However, I do remember how Craig Joubert shown his running skills in 2015 or Pascal Gauzere shined in Cardiff in 2021. I do believe that Rassie, as anybody else, had a full right to share his vision of Nic Berry’s performance the same year. I do not support the hate in any form especially in public one, but creating the cast of untouchable refs and rugby bosses is not for me. As for Karl, he had all means to question his appointment for the game and since I don’t now whether he did it, blaming just RFU wouldn’t be quite correct at this moment. I love the game of rugby and almost every time I watch it I don’t support any team, I just wanna see the good game and fair referring. Sorry, Karl. last Saturday you got my Craig Joubert”s award of the round. It is up to Karl to prove that I am wrong, not to Andy or RFU’s corporate bla-bla-bla. Something like that…
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