IT
EN
Ask a prop for his best moment and he won’t tell you about a try. When Marcos Gallorini has to pick the single instant of his season, he points to a scrum. It figures: the scrum is his obsession, the place where he learned to grow up and, at the same time, the wall that showed him how far he still has to go.
Under-20 dominance
With Italy Under-20 that front row was a machine. Gallorini recalls a side capable of calling a scrum even in its own half, of grinding seven or eight scrums in a row on the opposition five-metre line, of collecting a flood of penalties in a handful of matches. Against England, he says, they went one after another and nobody minded. It was the heart of their game: break the opponent up front, then build everything else from there.
In that setting Gallorini was also a finisher: in the pick-and-go, five metres out, the ball often ended up in his hands. But that was a front row whose sheer weight dwarfed opponents, with backs and back-rowers shoving as one block.
The wall of the pros
Then professionalism arrives, and everything changes from the very first instant: the engagement. Gallorini describes a training session in which, against Agustín Creevy, he delivered the hardest hit of his life — given and taken at once. He got up dazed, wondering what had happened. That was when he grasped the gap between dominating twenty-year-olds and absorbing the force of an international front row.
Scrummaging just for the sake of it isn’t my style.
His philosophy is to gamble: engage as hard as possible, win two steps and even fall, rather than deliver a cautious hit and leave a coin toss to the referee. But he has learned to read the pitch by zones. On the five metres you try to win the ball back; inside the opposition 22 you avoid handing out an easy exit. It is a world of bluffs and adjustments, where an experienced front row solves the situation while you are still working it out — as happened to him against the Sharks, feeling the opponent’s head rotate and the pressure come from another angle.
From weight to the dirty work
There is also a question of kilos. Gallorini finished the season at around 123-124, having once touched 135: less bulk, more mobility, but he is still paying for a lack of scrummaging experience among the big boys. And this is where his most interesting evolution emerges.
I far prefer to engage as hard as I possibly can.
He is no longer the giant kid among small kids, and he knows it. That is why today he enjoys the dirty work more than the try: the clean-outs, the support, the tackles, the contribution that doesn’t shine in the stats but makes the difference in the URC. Scoring is “no longer enough” to reach the top — a realisation more of a veteran than a rookie.
What really changes in the scrum between Under-20 and URC?
The engagement changes first: power and technique of another category. The reading changes, made of pitch zones, calibrated risk and mutual bluffing. And the prop’s role changes, required in modern rugby to hold the scrum but also to grind through work in open play. Talent opens the door; experience keeps it open.
Read also
- Marcos Gallorini, two cultures and one Azzurri dream
- Gallorini’s first professional season: two months in the stands, then the turnaround
- The Azzurri dream and the queue of props: Gallorini and his friend Gasperini
Love the world of the scrum? Watch the full interview on the DanPat Rugby channel and tell us in the comments which Italian front row gets you out of your seat.
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