Italians stomp Russia 53-17: Rugby World Cup News
Italy thumped the Rugby World Cup debut making Russians by a huge margin of 53-17 on September 20 in Nelson, New Zealand. Russia slumped into a greater state of haplessness when Italy made repeated attacks on its try lines and conceded six tries on in the
first half. Italy scored nine tries to teach a bitter lesson to the Russians underdogs.
Russia made four changes to their side that was beaten by the USA Eagles on September 15. The United States brushed aside the Russians by 13-6 after a comfortable win in New Plymouth. Nikolay Nerush, the head coach of Russia, decided to go with Konstantin
Rachkov as a fly-half. Previously he played at out-side centres’ postion in their last outgoing of the current Rugby World Cup 2011. Among the other significant changes, Denis Antonov was preferred over Adam Byrnes in the second rows.
For Italy, Nick Mallett relied only on some positional changes. He retained his skipper Sergio Parisse along with three other players to their original positions after a cracking defeat of 32-6 by Australia on September 11.
Sergio Parisse gave a flying start to his side by stealing an early try for Italy. He managed to cross the white wash line against Russia just in the sixth minute of the match. Riccardo Bocchino hailed his side with the follow up conversion goal and laid
a strong foundation for Italy to carry the day. Giulio Toniolatti’s try in the 13th minute of the match opened the flood gates for Italy and they scored four more tries before the interval.
Despite some sluggish work by Riccardo Bocchino, who missed a number of conversion goal scoring opportunities, Italy led the equation by 38-7 at the end of the first half.
Meanwhile, the rusty Russians were restricted to just seven points at the end of the first part of the game. Alexander Yanyushkin scored the only try for his team in the 33rd minute of the match and Vladimir Ostroushko grabbed a conversion goal.
Italy continued with the fine work in the second-half as well and scored three more tries after the break. Tommaso Benvenuti, Luke McLean and Alessandro Zanni were players who contributed with one try each for Italy in the second-half. Russia consoled its
score to 17 with two tries in the last half of the game.
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