Can the Italians do the unthinkable?

Suncorp Stadium, Brisbane in Australia will home to the Super Rugby Break Test Match between the Australian Wallabies and the Italian Azzurri on Saturday 24th June. 

With a local 3pm kick-off, European fans will have to be up early if they want to watch live footage from home, but who are these two teams, and who should be expecting the win is not a foregone conclusion.

In Australia, Rugby Union dates back as early as 1864 when the first formal rugby football club was formed by Sydney University, and the first officially sanctioned British team toured Australia in 1899.

The Rugby World Cup was inaugurated in 1987 but it wasn’t until 2003 that it was staged in Australia. To celebrate a decade of professional rugby union, the Wallaby Team of the Decade (The Wallabies) was announced in 2005.

The Australian national rugby union team changed it’s name to The Qantas Wallabies when the airline became the naming rights partner of the club. Qantas has been the official airline of the Australian rugby union team since 1990, however, in 2004 they replaced mobile phone operator, Vodafone (who had owned the naming rights from 1998-2003), as main sponsor. 

The Wallabies have competed in all eight Rugby World Cups and are considered one of the top three teams worldwide, with only New Zealands’ form and reputation superseding their own results. Australia have won the World Cup on two occasions, (as have South Africa), beating England in the 1991 final at Twickenham Stadium with a score of 12-6, and again in Wales in 1999, when they finished 35 points against France’s 12.  

More recently, however, the Wallabies have been experiencing a ‘mixed bag’ with a victorious win over Fiji on 10^th June, (37-14) but falling back on 17^th in their game against Scotland (24-19). 

Head Coach, Michael Cheika is predicted to make changes to the team ahead of Saturday’s game against Italy, following their disappointing performance. “I’d say there’d be a few (changes)”, he said “ It’s about being more urgent to the game. You’ve got to make it happen. You’ve got to have guys with that attitude”.  Whatever changes Cheika will make are yet to be seen, as are the effects they might have on the way the team plays and the final result.

Italy, on the other hand, is heading to Australia, with their current national rugby union team known as the Azzurri.

The remote ancestry of rugby has been linked to a Roman game known as ‘harpastum’ or another game called ‘trigon’. The British are believed to have brought rugby to Genoa sometime between 1890 and 1895 and the "Propaganda Committee" was formed in 1928  which became the FIR (Federazione Italiana Rugby).

Italy has competed at every Rugby World Cup since the first tournament in 1987, but have yet to progress beyond the first round. Led by Head Coach Conor O'Shea, they are hoping for great things, especially wit the current captain, Sergio Parisse, leading the team.  “Sergio Parisse is the greatest player ever to have played for Italy”, says O’Shea, and if the other team members can measure up, the results on Saturday could be surprising.

So, will Italians be able to finally break the trend, live up to their true potential and give their fans something to cheer about? Online sports betting operators all have Australia as huge odds on favourites, with Sportingbet pricing an Aussie win at 1/100. However, Conor O'Shea and his squad have to believe in themselves and make this their tournament to finally shine.