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/ Ralph Ellis / 08 February 2011 / Leave a Comment 
Italy boast the most experience pack in the Six Nations
"You can get around even money – the spread this morning was between [1.76] and [2.15] - backing Italy with a 22.5 point handicap."
Italy are improving with each Six Nations campaign and, following last year's close contest in Rome, Ralph Ellis wonders why the markets are offering such long odds on an Azzurri triumph at Twickenham.
When it comes to the Six Nations, we all expect Italy to be collecting the wooden spoon. Just to prove my point they are already installed as [1.47] favourites for the dubious honour. It's hardly surprising. It's where they have finished in all but three of the 12 seasons they've been in the competition. And in our minds they're still the new boys in a tournament that goes back, in one way shape or form, through 128 years of sporting history.
But there's a point when any set of boys start to become men. For instance it doesn't seem so long ago that the big cricketing nations were patting the heads of Sri Lanka and telling them to keep trying - only to wake up one morning and discover they'd invented the "pinch hitting" tactic that won them a World Cup. Some 15 years later they are quite rightly [6.0] second favourites to do it again.
As Italy begin their second decade in the Six Nations tournament there are signs that experience is beginning to pay. Ask Ireland, who needed a dramatic late Ronan O'Gara dropped goal to avoid leaving Rome's Stadio Flaminio on the wrong end of a defeat on Saturday afternoon.
Yet despite that promise, Betfair's early market seems to still be writing off Italy as hopeless minnows. England are as short as [1.03] to win at Twickenham on Saturday. And while, after the encouraging victory in The Millenium Stadium, there's no reason to think Martin Johnson's side won't follow that up with another win, there's equally no reason to think it will be easy.
You can get around even money - the spread this morning was between [1.76] and [2.15] - backing Italy with a 22.5 point handicap. That has to be great value, bearing in mind how England struggled to handle the Italian pack in Rome last year when they struggled to a 17-12 victory and couldn't even dominate the forward exchanges while Martin Castrogiovanni was sat in the sin bin. The return this year of talismanic number eight Sergio Parisse will simply make the Italians stronger.
England's forwards coach John Wells is wary of the threat posed by the most experienced scrum in the competition, with an average of 53 caps between them. "Sometimes you have to win ugly," he's told the Daily Telegraph's Mick Cleary this morning. "They are extremely dogged and very, very difficult to break down. We always get pilloried when we play them, and then everybody else has the same trouble."
That hardly sounds like a man planning a free flowing, expansive strategy to get Chris Ashton running in half a dozen tries. What it does say is that England are taking the threat posed by the Six Nations "new boys" extremely seriously. Maybe it is time we punters began to do the same.
Five things you might not know about Martin Castrogiovanni
1. Born October 1981 in the Argentine city of Parana, his mum wouldn't let him play the rough sport of rugby so he played basketball for local club Atletico Echague until he was 18 - when he was banned for pushing the referee
2. His grandfather was from Sicily. Within a year of taking up rugby he moved to Italy to play for Ghial Calvisano. He was fast tracked straight into the Italian Six Nations squad
3. The Italian restaurant he owns in Leicester - called Timo - has just opened a new branch
4. He's got a dog called fatty - it's a British bulldog. "He's not fat, I just call him that because it's what people called me"
5. His fiancée Giulia Candiago is a member of the Italian skiing team
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