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They met at a World Cup, called their first match together in South Africa in 1995 and never split up after that. Thirty years on, Vittorio Munari and Antonio Raimondi are sitting in a courtyard in Malamocco, on the Lido di Venezia, in front of a plate of scampi and a bib.
Rugby, they swear, has nothing to do with today. Then of course it does, but only at the end.
The most recognisable double act in Italian rugby
For anyone who learned the game from television, those two voices are the game: the Six Nations on Sky first, then free-to-air on DMAX, Munari on the technical analysis and Raimondi on play-by-play. A partnership that dates back to the early 2000s and has run through almost all of Italy’s recent history.
The secret, to hear them tell it, is not a professional one.
I have been lucky: professionally, but above all in terms of intellectual honesty and friendship. We always got on, and I think that helped us get through difficult moments, mistakes we made, all sorts of things.
How do you survive thirty years side by side?
Mostly with irony. Asked what it means to sit next to Munari, Raimondi says there is a definite upside: on the distant day when it matters, he will always be able to introduce himself as the man who spent all those years with him.
On that distant day, when it happens, I will always be able to say: I spent many years with Vittorio Munari, and so the gates of heaven will be open.
Rewarding in what sense? “It is hardship pay.” Munari takes it without blinking.
A birthday in New Zealand and a night of lobsters
The two moments they carry with them are not matches. The first is Munari’s sixtieth birthday, celebrated in New Zealand in 2011 with New Zealand and Australian friends, David Campese among them: a day that, he says, had “a good flow”.
The second comes from Raimondi and dates to 1995, in South Africa: a restaurant already closed for the night, reopened because Munari wanted the lobsters they had. How it ended is better left untold. The short version, according to Raimondi, is that the place shut down the next day.
Why they are there
The setting is not incidental. Gruppo Bevanda Malamocco is a social promotion association from the Lido di Venezia that recently celebrated fifty years and adopted rugby long ago: events, initiatives, fundraising. Munari, who does not hand out admiration easily, makes an exception here.
They have a commitment to social work, to local collaboration, to being constructive and always positive that I have rarely come across.
That is exactly why two men who have narrated Italian rugby for thirty years still travel for an afternoon like this one: because the third half, the real one, was never just a thing that happened on the pitch.
Read also: Munari: “Rugby is cyclical, and we don’t always get it right” · all DanPat Rugby news · the video archive · Checchinato and the 2000 jersey that changed Italian rugby
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