Italy vs Canada, 26 September

  
ITALY v CANADA
26 September 2015
KO: 14:30
Elland Road, Leeds
Live on ITV1 (United Kingdom) and TV3 (Republic of Ireland)

Referee: George Clancy (Ireland)
Assistant Referees: Glen Jackson (New Zealand), Mike Fraser (New Zealand)
TMO: George Ayoub (Australia)

Italy:

15 Luke McLean, 14 Leonardo Sarto, 13 Tommaso Benvenuti, 12 Gonzalo Garcia, 11 Giovanbattista Venditti, 10 Tommaso Allan, 9 Edoardo Gori, 8 Samuela Vunisa, 7 Francesco Minto, 6 Alessandro Zanni, 5 Josh Furno, 4 Quintin Geldenhuys, 3 Lorenzo Cittadini, 2 Leonardo Ghiraldini (c), 1 Michele Rizzo.

Replacements: 16 Davide Giazzon, 17 Matias Aguero, 18 Martin Castrogiovanni, 19 Marco Fuser, 20 Mauro Bergamasco, 21 Guglielmo Palazzani, 22 Carlo Canna, 23 Michele Campagnaro.

Canada:

15 Matt Evans, 14 Phil Mackenzie, 13 Ciaran Hearn, 12 Connor Braid, 11 DTH van der Merwe, 10 Nathan Hirayama, 9 Jamie Mackenzie, 8 Tyler Ardron (c), 7 John Moonlight, 6 Nanyak Dala, 5 Jamie Cudmore, 4 Jebb Sinclair, 3 Doug Wooldridge, 2 Ray Barkwill, 1 Hubert Buydens.

Replacements: 16 Aaron Carpenter, 17 Djustice Sears-Duru, 18 Andrew Tiedemann, 19 Evan Olmstead, 20 Kyle Gilmour, 21 Phil Mack, 22 Conor Trainor, 23 Harry Jones.

I take it parrise is still injured then?

I think so.

A somewhat underwhelming fixture given the next one (and I think there is another game on tonight somewhere)

Good crowd and atmosphere. Didn't realise how much camber there is on the Elland Road pitch, don't recall seeing that at Murrayfield or Scotstoun.

One word to anyone going tomorrow - the queues for the shuttle-bus started to build early and there were some problems with traffic.

I wish they could get someone better than John Inverdale doing the build up to matches. He really annoys me.

Canadian hooker looks like some of the bikers from Sons of Anarchy

Canada looking very dangerous. that was a brilliant try.

Canada playing fairly well so far. Would it be such a shock for them to beat Italy?

Excellent, excellent try. That and the Japanese try off the line-out are the 2 standouts for me so far.

Certainly was.

Brilliant play from DTH

That's as good a try as you're ever going to see

This could be a very exciting game, unexpectedly so!

Fantastic stuff from DTH

Couple of cracking tries from both teams, this game is exceeding my expectations by far!

End to End rugby. Brilliant Italy try just now 17 minutes into the and already 17 points on the board.

I saw no reason to go to the TMO for the disallowed Italian try. Clearly the linesman got that correct. Way too much over reliance on the TMO.

Just turned on the game, how can Cipriani have played 10 years of pro rugby and still have a pretty face like that.

Decent crowd for Canada v Italy. 38000 capacity and it looks mostly full.

Brilliant try from Canada

Canada are flying!

might be a forward pass

Beautiful creativity from Canada.

Another brilliant try from Canada or was it forward

pity, but these Canadians have some speed and power

and probably more beards than any other side I can think of.

Italy will be doing well to get any win in this group the way they are playing

Italy truly are a poor team. They are so undisciplined in defence.

eirebilly wrote:Italy truly are a poor team. They are so undisciplined in defence.

I agree. I did not expect Italy to play this poor to be honest.

Entertaining match though, Canada are giving it a great go and are the better team.

Crazy decision by the touch judge there. The whole ground knew he wasn't in touch. The tempo from Canada is fantastic again today. DTH van der Merwe

Glen jackson human after all. Watching the foot rather than the ball...

Ref totally bottled that one, penalty and yellow at best penalty try and yell at worst

And I am eating my words from earlier on. This game is fun. And that Canadian winger is really good

Cracking game.

Canada suffering from the 2 worst, most incompetent and idiotic officials in world rugby Clownshoes Clancy and cheat Jackson.

I hope Canada win this

What happend to the other Bergamasco? the winger? is he still playing but not international rugby?

That decisions to go for the posts looks pretty silly now.

To be honest Italy can count them selves lucky to win that game.

Still a win is a win. But very hard luck to Canada. Brilliant effort and very unlucky not to win.

Canada should have taken a leaf out of Japan's book and backed themselves to go for a try instead of taking that last 3 pointer - however they can also feel hard done by for the bizarre call from Jackson that cost them a good attacking position when Italy were all over the place ...

Can't believe Canada didn't win that. Definitely the better team, I think they left at least three tries out there by taking the wrong option with the final pass or just not executing well enough.

Italy were pretty bad, there for the taking actually. Makes it all the more disappointing for Canada to miss that opportunity.

Gutted for Canada, they really deserved to win that game. Just shows that the better team on the day doesn't win.

I do have a sneaky feeling that the bigger nations are getting far too much rub of the green in regards to the officiating this RWC.

Well done Italy that win will mean a lot even though they were not the better side. Good work by Canada. They played some fantastic rugby today.

Good game. TMO done my head in again as did Inverwank and co who'd rather talk about a different game.

majesticimperialman wrote:What happend to the other Bergamasco? the winger? is he still playing but not international rugby?

Still playing with Zebre, occasionally centre too, but not selected into the 31 man squad, and rightly so, overrated player imo.

Italy have no excuse for their pathetic form, they are playing in a top tier tournament for 15 years now and their teams are in a top tier competition since 2010. Georgia are arguably doing better taking everything into consideration and they are doing it the hard way, ie without imports.

no excuses, just Brunel's experience as Italy's coach has virtually ended, an in a bad way, some months ago and it can be seen watching tha headless bunch of hens we have turned into.