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EN
The scrum was working. The opposition was struggling. And for long stretches it really did feel like this game was there for the taking. It finished 34-26 to Ireland.
At the AIA Arena in Kutaisi, in the ninth-place final of the Junior World Championship, an Italy side led on the pitch by captain Riccardo Casarin signed off from the tournament in tenth. The Azzurri tries came from Enoch Opoku-Gyamfi, Erik Meroi and Luca De Novellis, with Nikolaj Varotto’s late break setting the final score. It came too late.
The edge was there. The points weren’t.
Italy’s scrum had grown match by match across the tournament, and in the Georgian rain it got on top again. The trouble is that almost nothing came of it: no penalty lineout driven all the way home, no passage where the technical advantage turned into daylight on the scoreboard.
When you have a weapon that works and you don’t cash it in, sooner or later you pay for it.
So how did Ireland get through?
Straight down the middle. The Irish found the inside channel far too easily, and that’s where their early tries came from — not elaborate strike plays, just direct lines against a defence that kept opening up. It’s the same weakness that had already cost Italy earlier in the campaign, most obviously against Scotland.
A second half of chances left behind
After the break the script flips: Italy pin Ireland inside their own half and stay there. But the list of what didn’t get finished is long, and it stings on a re-watch — a pick-and-go turned over, a penalty for holding on, a maul that looked like it had to go over two or three times and didn’t, once because Valerio Pelli broke off too early, once for being held up.
Meanwhile Ireland escaped the siege with a couple of stolen lineouts and a few kicks from Mattia Andretti that handed them territory. Two of Italy’s tries, on top of that, came with an extra man on the field — a detail that makes the accounting even harsher.
Then the decision that weighs most of all. One point down, posts on offer, Italy went to the corner. It didn’t come off, and from there the game tipped for good.
Tenth place: how much does it actually matter?
Not much, and rightly so. Where an Under-20 side finishes tells you far less than how it got there, and this tournament said plenty. What lingers is the feeling there was more in this team, and that Ireland took it home simply by cashing in better.
The scrum decisions deserve their own footnote: with a pack shoving like that, it was never clear whether Italy hadn’t read the referee or the referee hadn’t read Italy. On the knock-ons, there’s far less to argue about.
Read also
- Italy U20 have the talent: Andretti, Opoku-Gyamfi and the generation coming through
- DanPat Rugby video archive
Full breakdown of the match, phase by phase, is on the channel. Subscribe — and tell me in the comments whether you’d have gone to the corner too.
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