Mon 19 Mar 2012 | 09:37
Italy avoid the Wooden Spoon with win over Scotland

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The battle for fifth place in this year's Six Nations was a fairly dire affair, but Italy triumphed as they avoided the Wooden Spoon and beat Scotland 13-6 in the Olympic Stadium on Saturday. Below is the solitary try from the game.

Despite having a group of new players that have shown a lot of promise and flair in this year's tournament, Andy Robinson's Scotland lost five from five, relagating them to bottom of the table after another less than convincing performance.

A new chapter in Scottish rugby needs to begin, and whether Robinson will be a part of it or not remains to be seen. Speculation is now rife that the dejected coach, who has led Scotland to seven straight defeats, will face the axe. It's now 12 of the last 15 matches under Robinson in the Six Nations, which makes for poor reading.

"Everything is pretty emotional at the moment. I need to go away and think through what is right with a plan, and that’s what I’ll be doing," he said after the game.

Italy's Sergio Parisse on the other hand was pleased with the win, saying that they did it for new coach Jacques Brunel, who took over from Nick Mallett.

"That feels good. We've had enough good matches in this tournament, we only just lost against England here at the Olympico for example. Today we had possession of the ball, I think we deserved the win. We were a little bit afraid at half-time because they came into our half for 30 seconds and scored three points.

"But we won. It's good for Jacques, who's just arrived," Parisse added.

1 Comments

  • pretzel
    7:35 PM 19/03/2012

    I think the injuries suffered earlier in the tournament killed any flair Scotland had shown.

    Earlier in the tournament they looked to be trying new things, and actually remaining calm, and not squeezing that last unnecessary pass. I thought it might be a new "on the up" Scottish team. But a few injuries later and Scotland were right back into that mode of passing the ball miles behind the gain line and trying to force the last pass (leading to a knock on).

    Good result for Italy. I said in another video comment section that the Italian pack seems to have already peaked, and I hope for their sake that they don't need to order in a new pack by the time they have sorted their back line out.