The crazy idea of joining the best four teams in the world. They will play it tomorrow at dawn (Italian), against the dearest enemy France, at the time when dreams usually die, giving way to the banality of reality. But the Italian rugby girls have already reached a real goal, beating Japan 8-5 in the last match of the qualifying round of the World Cup in New Zealand: no national rugby team had ever reached the quarter-finals in a world cup.
“There is no need to specify that another type of match will be needed against France,” explains Elisa Giordano, known as Polipo, a Venetian from Noale, captain on the field, therapist in life. «We have achieved the result we wanted and we are very happy, we have already made history. But we did not celebrate properly because it is not enough for us anymore. France are a very tough team, but they have everything to lose. Not if they fear us, we hope not, because when they underestimate us we know how to surprise ». Pulling out of the drawer the comparisons with the male oval ball, the national team that (almost) never wins, is of little use: different worlds, different interests, different money. Or perhaps it is very useful, because it makes it clear that we are not unsuitable for rugby, but rugby, which has been thinking about castes in men for two centuries, discouraging the upstart. In the other half of Ovalia, where tradition is not an unsustainable burden (it has only been seriously played since the 1980s) the hierarchies are more fluid and it also pays to bet on Italian technicians. Andrea di Giandomenico has been coaching the women’s national team since 2009. Traveling without too many lights, pointed at him, at the same time as the unsuccessful male Babel – two South African coaches, one French and one Irish – he managed to win three games in the same Six Nations and accompany the team to the fifth place in the world ranking, starting from the fifteenth in 2003: an elevator that is unthinkable among males. After all, in the group Italy subdued the USA, which were the first world champions in 1991, while Australia and England, who challenged each other in the men’s, remain off-limits for the Azzurri. France is not taboo, the blue have already beaten them more than once, the last in Biella 26-19 in the pre-world championship, even if on that occasion the blues fielded a formation, as a typical euphemism goes, widely reworked. This time it will be a tough battle, but in any case it will be a success for a movement that before the pandemic had 9000 practitioners, born between jokes and general skepticism in a cemetery parking lot, and that Fir recognized only in the early 90s, in the wake of the successes of the Red Panthers of Treviso. The dream is true professionalism, like the one experienced by English colleagues. The road is long, and it also passes by tomorrow dawn in Whangerei.
The match will be broadcast live on Rai 2, Sky Sport Uno and Sky Sport Arena at 5.20 am and live streaming on Rai Play, Sky Go and Now.