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It takes a glass in hand and a courtyard on the Lido di Venezia to get the real argument out of him. Vittorio Munari offers it almost reluctantly, after saying he did not feel like talking rugby at all: people talk about it too much, he says, and usually without knowing why.
Then he starts anyway, and it becomes the most serious thing said all afternoon.
History is cyclical too. Within the cycle you have to work out how much we are willing to learn, and history suggests human beings have learned very little. Rugby is the same: it is cyclical, but we do not always get it right.
Three waves of enthusiasm, three difficult mornings after
Italian rugby has been here before. There was the generation of the 1990s upsets, crowned by a first ever win over France at Grenoble in 1997. There was the generation of the early Six Nations years, the one that put rugby on prime time. And there is this group of players, who in DanPat’s view have something special about them.
The catch is what followed the first two waves: hard years, enthusiasm evaporating, rebuilds starting from scratch. That is why Munari is careful.
Why is today’s enthusiasm different from the 1980s?
For Munari the difference is not how much passion there is, but what that passion produces. In the 1980s and 1990s amateurs made sacrifices to build something around the values of the game, and real investment followed. Today, he says, Italian rugby is excellent at stating principles and far weaker at applying them.
They are far more announcers than teachers. Somebody telling me what the right thing is does not interest me much: it would matter more to actually do the right thing.
It is not nostalgia, and he says so straight away: the world changes, he is condemning nobody. It is a call to act, in an environment that has grown used to talking.
Raimondi: “We have to be ready”
Antonio Raimondi, who has shared a commentary box with Munari for thirty years, reaches the same conclusion by another route. He does not believe the mistakes can be avoided altogether: he believes you have to be ready for the bill when it arrives.
It is very hard not to repeat them. Everything really is cyclical and sometimes it is difficult to keep that same enthusiasm, because we know the disappointments are coming: so we have to be prepared and we have to try to move forward.
The question that stays
The good cycle has always arrived in Italy. The problem has always been what comes next: what gets built while the team is winning, so that something is still standing when it stops. Munari and Raimondi do not offer the answer, but they put the question on the table in the most uncomfortable way possible. And this time Italian rugby has the means to answer it.
Read also: Munari and Raimondi, thirty years in the commentary box · all DanPat Rugby news · the video archive · Checchinato on Italy: academies, Quesada and the tour lesson
Do you agree with Munari? Tell us in the comments on the DanPat Rugby YouTube channel, where you will find the full interview.
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