Call me romantic, or perhaps auld fashioned, but I do really like the British and Irish protocol before every Six Nations game.

Eire President Mary McAleese before the Ireland v Italy game

Maybe it is because we are not used to have kings or queens, or in this case princes and princesses, anymore (thankfully… especially if you think at our royal family!!!), but this shows how important is, and has always been, the Six Nation Tournament in the Home Nations culture.

President of Ireland Mary McAleese herself attended – as usual – to the opening game between Ireland and Italy at Croke Park last Saturday and greeted the players from both teams.

Prince William and Prince Harry, who are respectively Vice Patron of the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU) and Vice Patron of the RFU both attended the England v Wales clash at Twickenham, while their aunt, Princess Anne, was of course at Murrayfield for the Scotland v France game, being the Patron of the Scottish Rugby Union.

I recall that we once tried to do something like that at a Italy v Ireland game few years ago. If I’m not wrong the then-Minister for Cultural Assets and Activities Giovanna Melandri attended to the game but she looked a bit out of place: you can’t be the patron of something you know nothing about…

The Six Nations is all about tradition and we hardly know the meaning of this word, that’s why we are and always will be parvenu.

Here are the fixtures of the 2010 Tournament:

Only 3 days to go to the 2010 Six Nations Championship and, I can’t remember where, I’ve read that France are apparently the front-runners… but since we all have our personal opinion on the matter, I will say that I completely disagree and I foresee Ireland’s Brian O’Driscoll raising the 6 Nation Trophy for the second year in a row ! As for the other competitors, I think Italy is once again at the bottom of the barrel (sigh!), while France & England will fight for the second place and Wales & Scotland for the fourth place.

Ireland’s strenght is definitely the positive season they had last year and basically, apart from back rower Stephen Ferries out due to injury and replaced by debutant Kevin McLaughlin (Leinster), the team is unchanged: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

France coach Marc Lièvremont keeps on with his policy with testing young players in anticipation of 2011 RWC, with centre Mathieu Bastareaud back in the team along with the 20-year-old winger Benjamin Fall.

As for England, they have their talisman player, Jonny Wilkinson, back and fully fit, and basically there are not major or exciting changes in the team.Two players to watch: hooker Dylan Hartley and scrum-half Danny Care.

With their win over Australia last November, Scotland have displayed great improvements in the forwards unit: I guess Massimo Cuttitta’s work is paying off. For my friend Giorgia’s delight Chris Paterson is still in the team and is not a one-trick pony, coach Robinson says! The 31-year-old will win his 99th cap when France visit Murrayfield on Sunday. Congratulations to Mossy!

Wales haven’t made any major change in the team and centre Jamie Roberts will be of capital importance to bring some sparks in Welsh game.

As for Italy, well, year after year we keep on repeating the same refrain: strong forwards & useless backs. We have a powerful scrum but when we gain the ball we hardly know what to do with it. Are all the players dumb? Is the gameplan too difficult? Is there a gameplan, by the way? Anyway, at least, for the first time in years, we’ll have a young Italian stand-off in the line-up: uncapped Riccardo Bocchino has been selected by coach Nick Mallet in the 24-man squad for the RBS 6 Nations opener against Ireland, and “will prove cover for first choice No.10 Craig Gower, who is struggling with a knee injury”.

Best of luck to Riccardo, who’s non-the-less than Luigi “Er Principe” Bocchino’s cousin, an old acquaitance of mine (at least something good has come out of that family!!!)

So, what’s do you think of my rant? Any comment?

Another year has begun and another Six Nations Championship is approaching, but for me there’s very little to rejoice.

On the contrary I had to make a very difficult decision and…. sin bin myself.

This actually translates into taking a step back from coaching at least for a while, due to some health problems. It has been a hard decision but it is even harder to explain people why I can’t coach at the moment. I understand that they find it hard to realise that even a “simple” headache could be a real problem… but my headaches are never “simple”.

So, since sometimes I find hard to stand and that I quite often wish I was able to put my head in the fridge for stopping the pain (no medication has proved good for such headaches), I really can’t figure myself shouting for 75 mins at undisciplined children…. and survive!

Bummer! We were working quite well I think, but I completely trust in my co-coach and no hope is lost: perhaps in a month or so I should be able to go back to my usual self and on the pitch again…

So, fingers crossed.

And here are my choices:

The IRB, International Rugby Board, has announced last Monday the shortlist for the IRB Player of the Year 2009.

Unlike the previous years when the candidates were up to 5, this year sees an extended list of seven nominees: 2 for Ireland with Captain Brian O’Driscoll and no.8 Jamie Heaslip, Australia’s Matt Giteau, Tom Croft of England, Francois Steyn and Fourie du Preez from South Africa, and the evergreen Richie McCaw of New Zealand who already won the award in 2006.

The winner will be announced, together with the IRB Coach of the Year and IRB Team of the Year, during the final weekend of November Tests.

PLAYER OF THE YEAR: Brian Gerald O’Driscoll

Ireland Captain and British & Irish Lions, Brian O'Driscoll

COACH OF THE YEAR: Ian McGeechan

Ian McGeechan, British & Irish Lions Head Coach, South Africa Tour 2009

 

TEAM OF THE YEAR: 2009 British & Irish Lions

 

2009 British & Irish Lions

Five days after the “Event” I finally found the time – and the strenght – to write about it. During these past days I’ve been thinking about what to write and the problem was that I hardly had something to say about the game itself because my whole day has been devoted to attending the kids who were the standard-bearers during the National Anthems.

So, when you find yourself with 6 children, 4 of them aged under 8, to look after in a gigantic stadium with 80.000 people attending the game, well the least you can do is to turn yourself into Father Goose, or in this case, Mother Goose… And trust me, it can be extremely weary but most of all it can be scary: the idea to lose a child in such a bedlam is frightening!

Then, to this trifle, you should add the fact that the very clever event organization gave us the the seats in 2 different sectors (bloody hell!!!), so I had to send the oldest two (2 of my Under12) to seat 50 meters apart, while the rest of us was given the worst seats ever, in the first row at ground level with huge parapets at eye level. I am 5′2 and I couldn’t see anything… so go figure what the kids could see from there too….

Anyway, busy as I was looking at the two Under 12 far away, and babysitting the youngest who kept on asking for attention, you can easily imagine that I hardly saw anything and all I got was a stiff neck! In the end I even had to give up the idea to follow the action live and watched some of it on the mega-screen… how I longed for my couch and TV set!

All in all, this has been one of the most terrifying experience of my life.

Italy v New Zealand, 14-11-2009, Stadio San Siro, Milano Italy

Sorry for the poor quality of the picture, but the aforesaid conditions undermined also my photographic skills.

Dan Carter wearing the Chicken Rozzano colours (courtesy of Luca Fazzo)

I know I’ve been quite lazy lately and I didn’t post much here. In my defence it must be said that I’ve been very busy both with my daytime bloody job and on the pitch.

My boys have been playing a couple of Tournament in the meanwhile as well, and faced some hard lessons but also easy wins. The hardest lesson came from the Rho Tournament, where both Rho Rugby and Velate Rugby proved to be too strong for us, and what really failed us was the tackling area. Actually we must say that we didn’t work much on tackling since the beginning of the season because our Director of Rugby suggested to work first on using spaces, offloads and support play, and that’s what we did. And this paid off in our first tournament: the other teams were quite weak and we had most of the possession, so our defense was never put to the test. But when we faced more organised teams we – and the boys too – realised that working on tackles is a priority. And that’s what we did in the past 2 weeks despite the small number of players due to the spreading flu!

Anyway, our next tournament will be on Sunday in Pavia (again), where we already won 2 tournaments out of 2, but before that we have another great event ahead on Saturday: the Italy v New Zealand test-match at Stadio San Siro in Milan! And what’s even better is that both the boys and staff won’t be simple spectators of the event, actually we will be part of it since some of our Under 12s and Under 8s, along with boys from other 3 Milanese clubs, will be the standard-bearers; some of our Under 16s will be the ball boys and the whole Under 10 will play a four-sided tournament just before the test-match.

What an incredible experience will be for them in front of 80.000 people (!!!), and me too, since I’m going to be the standard-bearers escort. So, in case you’re watching the test-match on TV or at San Siro and see a mad girl chasing Richie McCaw… well that “girl” could be me!

Chicken Rugby Rozzano Under12, Rozzano Tournament 11/10/09 - Good kicking technique!

Chicken Rugby Rozzano Under12, Rozzano Tournament 11/10/09 - Perfect offload

Chicken Rugby Rozzano Under12, Rozzano Tournament 11/10/09 - I like it when they hold the ball in both hands!

Chicken Rugby Rozzano Under12, Rozzano Tournament 11/10/09 - Luca charges with good support

Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaja

Three years have passed since she was silenced and her killers are still “unknown”.

They might have taken her life but her words are written in the stone and her piercing eyes  are still searching for truth.

“You can blow out a candle
But you can never blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher”

Simple Minds

I don’t really think I can do it… not even my new Adidas shorts can convince me that I want to coach children!

I know they are our future, blah-blah-blah.. and this scares me even more because what I saw last Tuesday at the training session, really puzzles me: an eleven years old child in tears because, from his own voice, “I’m nervous“, or a 8 years

My worst nightmare

old, again in tears, because another child didn’t respect the rules of the Sparrow game! What the hell is going on here??

Moreover we don’t have enough coaches to cover all the minirugby teams so, our Director of Rugby is trying to convince me that shifting from team to team is a positive thing! This means that in the first 30 mins of the session I’m working with my co-coach with the U12 (which should be my official team), then the next 45 mins I should relieve the U10 coach, who is also the fitness coach and has to work with the Junior teams. BTW, the U10 is actually composed of 15 or more screaming and whining children from 5 y.o. to 9 y.o!!!

And the icing on the cake is that our DoR wishes that, after some time, all children will recognize the 3 coaches as their own coaches. I told him that this is Utopia and reminded him how Thomas More ended up!

In my experience children need reference marks, and shifting coaches are the opposite of it. If then we add the aggravation that the three coaches do not communicate (no common coaching plan or such), the mix is really high-explosive!

I don’t really know how long I’ll be able to stand this…

After a sabbatical year, away from Rugby fields, I’m back in the saddle…

Yesterday I had my first training session with my new club and team. Or I should say… “teams”. As a matter of fact, I had to work both with Under 10 and Under 12, and probably, in the next future, I’ll be also working with Under 14!

To tell the truth, I don’t like being the “joker in the pack of cards”, because if I work with all these teams and can’t focus on one only I find it very difficult to plan a training session, or the week sessions, let alone a quarter. I’m afraid I’ve always been the type of coach who has to plan things and I don’t enjoy that much to play it by ear. Moreover I don’t think I could get along very well with the other Under10 coach… I don’t know him much but he definitely gets on my nerves.

I really hope this is just a phase…