IT
EN1991, middle school. Moreno Molla finishes eating and plonks himself in front of the TV for Wrestling Spotlight. Except the wrestling doesn’t start: in its place there’s a rugby match — maybe New Zealand, maybe England, he doesn’t quite recall. «Oh well, let’s watch, it’ll be over quickly», he tells himself. He never looked away from the screen again.
That match was the World Cup, and the wrestling had been bumped precisely to make room for it. So, thanks to a schedule changed at the last minute, one of the faces of Italian rugby on TV was born.
A love that grew in the dead of night
Those were the years when there was very little rugby on television, and you «drank it in» at every rare chance. Molla recalls one in particular: a Tonga–France broadcast on French TV, a Thursday at three in the morning. He wanted to watch it live, dragging along the person who was with him — the one who, he says with a smile, «got over the trauma» and is today his wife. Brave.
The forward who kicked
He was never a chosen one: he came from football, he’d played volleyball. But when he came to rugby, at Parabiago, he gave himself a satisfaction he still treasures. After a few games as a forward, seeing the others miss their place-kicks, he asked the coach: «Can I have a go». The reply: «As long as you don’t miss, you kick». He landed — he says — 78 in a row, including a kick from halfway in the derby against Varese. It’s «the thing closest to my heart»: one of the very few forwards who kick. Because, after all, who says the kicker has to be the fly-half.
A single dream
At almost fifty, you ask him his dream and you expect “to commentate on a World Cup final”. But no: «That’s not it». His wish is another one, simpler and truer.
«The dream is that this passion never runs out, that this fuel keeps refuelling itself every time.»
Because the day that fuel ran out, he says, would be the moment to change jobs. And so long live that bumped schedule of 1991: without it, today, we’d have missed a piece of the story of Italian rugby.
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