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Italy are coming to Cardiff looking to back up their historic win against England with another historic win. The Azzurri have never won three games in a single Six Nations before and will fancy their chances against a Wales team who haven’t beaten any team ranked in the world top 10 in over three years.
Italy are coming to Cardiff looking to back up their historic win against England with another historic win. The Azzurri have never won three games in a single Six Nations before and will fancy their chances against a Wales team who haven’t beaten any team ranked in the world top 10 in over three years.
However, the Welsh have been gradually building as this tournament has gone on. Steve Tandy has named an unchanged starting team from the one that pushed Ireland in Dublin last week and his only change on the bench has been to swap debutant Louis Hennessy for the elusive Blair Murray.
Optimism is growing in Wales that another victory is getting closer. Will they get it against Italy? It will be tight, but there are reasons to believe they can. In this article, we’ll outline three principles Wales should adopt on Saturday that will give them the best chance of delivering a much-needed win.
Despite the hype that has surrounded Italy’s excellent Six Nations campaign so far, their attack is still the weakest part of their game. Italy currently rank bottom of the Six Nations for tries scored and are on track to have their lowest points scored in a tournament since current head coach Gonzalo Quesada took over.
If we look at Italy’s tries in the last three games, their two against England both came from individual moments from Tommaso Menoncello. Their single try against France came from the French making a mistake behind their own try line and their single try against Ireland came from a driving maul five metres out.
Wales’ defence is still not perfect, and it was arguably made to look better than it is by a dull Irish performance last week. However, it has been getting better week on week – Wales were a guaranteed 50 points at the start of the Six Nations but have kept the opposition below 30 in the last two games.
Italy’s carry dominance is the lowest in the competition and their tackle evasion isn’t high either. This should be Wales’ best chance to shut an opposition out. If they can maintain their organisation and stay connected as a defensive unit, there is no reason why the Italians should run away from them. If they can’t do that, they have a serious problem.
Italy have been getting more line-outs in this Six Nations, compared to last year, and they are stealing opposition line-outs more than they were, too. However, if we deep-dive the line-out statistics, we see that four of their five line-outs all came against Scotland in round one. Since then, they have stolen just one.
Meanwhile, on their own throws, they have lost a tournament high of 12. They are the only side to have had a line-out stolen from them in every single game so far, yet only a third of their line-out losses have been due to steals – the rest have all been skill errors.
Wales only have one line-out steal in the tournament so far, in the lead up to which they faced over 100 opposition line-outs without stealing one. That must change. If they can steal, or even just effectively compete with Italy’s jumpers, then they will create doubt in the opposition’s mind and they could implode – as they did against France, where they lost six of their own throws.
France showed in that game how to capitalise on line-out turnovers and score tries. If Wales can have the likes of Louis Rees-Zammit lurking in anticipation of line-out turnovers, they can not only limit Italy’s attack platforms, but also create try-scoring opportunities for themselves.
This game is expected to be tight. In tight games, when you are awarded a penalty in kickable range, the instinct is to take the three. This is what the Italians have been doing – they have kicked 8 penalty goals so far this Six Nations and missed a couple more on top of that – by far the most of anyone.
If they do this against Wales, they will be letting their hosts off the hook – in 2025, Wales had one of the worst points conceded per 22m entry against in the world, at 3.4. Coincidentally, Italy are also very poor in this metric, at 3.3. Therefore, Wales must capitalise on Italy’s hesitancy and go for the jugular. One of the few advantages they have over the Azzurri is average points scored per entry, and they must make it pay.
Even if they fail to score, by going to the corner, they will maintain control of territory and keep Italy out of kicking range. Even France looked blunt at times against the Italians, but by keeping almost the entire second half in Italy’s half, they managed to hold them to nil.
To summarise, Italy are still favourites for this encounter, but the gap between them and Wales isn’t as great as results may suggest. Their improvement is significant, but they still have flaws that can be exploited.
Furthermore, there is a chance their historic win over England last week may have caused them to take their eye off this week; they wouldn’t be the first team to deliver a flat performance after an emotional high. For Wales, on the other hand, this is the big one - it’s time to see what they can really do.
