IT
ENSome farewells make less noise than others, but weigh just the same. Luca Bigi, Valorugby hooker and former Italy captain, has chosen to end his playing career in the way every athlete would dream of: as an Italian champion. In our special episode he said it almost on tiptoe, with no grand announcements.
A farewell now official
Now it’s official: Luca Bigi has announced his retirement from playing. At the time of our interview the decision was already made, but not yet formally communicated: his role for next season still had to be defined, and something had already leaked in the Reggio press. Today the picture is complete.
Even then, at our microphones, he left little doubt about the meaning of that choice.
I finished in the best possible way.
The substance, after all, was clear from the start: the pitch, as a player, he leaves here. And he does so with the Tricolore sewn on his chest, the perfect ending to a story that began many years ago a few kilometres from Reggio.
From Rivalta to the national team: a decade-long career
A Reggio man from Rivalta, born in 1991, raised in the Reggio rugby academy, Bigi built a professional path that took him to the top. After his beginnings and a spell at Viadana, the move to Petrarca and then the call from Treviso, with four seasons in the Benetton jersey. Then Zebre, where he stayed six years, until the return home, to Valorugby.
In between, a high-profile Azzurri career: almost 50 caps with the national team and two World Cups lived as a protagonist. Bigi himself, retracing the stages, regrets nothing: each step left him something, even if the inevitable regrets remain for a few injuries that cost him chances.
What it meant to be Italy captain
In January 2020 Bigi took on a hugely demanding legacy: the Italy captaincy, after the Sergio Parisse era. He wore the armband in the 2020 and 2021 Six Nations. Few wins, true, but for him the balance isn’t measured in results alone.
The thread running through his whole career is that of bonds. The Zebre block he found again in the national team, the friends from back then he’s still in touch with today, the family that followed him in the stands: this, more than the trophies, is what he takes with him. A reading that’s anything but rhetorical, because it comes from someone who truly lived those dressing rooms.
Bigi and Quesada’s Italy: “Now these lads dream of winning”
As a former captain, Bigi has a privileged view of Italian rugby’s revival. And the change, both he and Violi say, is above all mental. There was a time when you settled for dreaming of a few wins in the Six Nations; today the players, in interviews, openly say they dream of winning the tournament.
It’s the fruit of a process: first the credibility to gain and consolidate — a mantra of the previous era — then the leap in self-belief under Gonzalo Quesada. The perception has changed, the way opponents approach Italy has changed. For Violi, the Argentine coach’s merit lies in a new balance: today you never know whether Italy will run or kick, and that unpredictability pays off. More than a dream, in short, a concrete goal.
Read also
- Valorugby campione d’Italia: la mentalità dietro lo Scudetto
- Marcello Violi, dalla maglia alla panchina: il mediano che ha vinto da allenatore
- La cronaca della finale Scudetto col Petrarca (27-5)
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