There was an advert recently on Italian TV when four vast but genial blokes filled the screen extolling the virtues of an unspecified product, before the camera pulled back to reveal they were all Italian rugby forwards and squeezed shoulder to shoulder inside a minute Fiat.
The ad was pleasing for a number of reasons, not least the sight of half a ton of grinning humanity crammed into a tiny space. But I particularly liked it because it seemed to show that Italian rugby was becoming part of mainstream Italian culture, like football, food and Fellini. Like anyone with a modicum of humanity, I am continually wrestling with the eternal conundrum of whether Italy or the game of rugby has contributed more to civilisation. Thus it was that Saturday’s unbearably tense but thoroughly deserved Six Nations win over France was epiphanic.
To see the titanic figure of Sergio Parisse weeping uncontrollably as he embraced his team on the final whistle was to see the glory of sport at its most raw.
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