COFFEE AND RUGBY - Key Persons
Franco Smith's journey to becoming Italy's head coach has been a fascinating adventure. Smith is a nine-times capped Springbok, who played fly-half and scored for South Africa in their crushing 96-13 win against Wales in 1998. That day, he lined up against current Wales attack coach Stephen Jones, who was earning his first cap, and Jones will be looking to inflict some revenge for his memorable for-all-the-wrong-reasons start to international rugby.
Wales were dubbed then as the "worst team in the world" after that thrashing but have since been able to recover their standing in the rankings and can move to within one game of another Grand Slam if they win on Saturday. Smith only lost once in his international playing career, but life as the Italian national coach is rather different to that of a Springbok and he is still looking for that maiden victory as an international head coach.
The 48-year-old has lived, played and coached in Italy for over a decade and has embraced the language and culture. A fluent Italian speaker he has a good understanding of Italian rugby and culture. Smith's coaching has produced titles at Treviso and at the Cheetahs back in his home country and he was an assistant coach for South Africa in 2017, under Allister Coetzee.
Smith is supported in his Italian coaching team by 101 cap Alessandro Troncon as his backs coach, Marius Goosen as his defence coach, Giampiero De Carli as the forwards coach, and Corrado Pilat as his skills coach. De Carli, incidentally, scored Italy's first try in the Six Nations in 2000 and was one of the tryscorers when they beat Wales in 2003 at the Stadio Flaminio.
What are the chances of one of their props scoring and winning on Saturday? You would have to say, they are on the extremely small side - statistically, perhaps three per cent - given that it is now six years and 30 matches since they last won a game in the tournament. Smith, a devote Christian, needs to start praying as his side will need some divine inspiration to win this match.
Even then, Italy will need the likes of Paolo Garbisi to pull the strings and get his team over that finish line. Back in 2003, veteran fly-half Diego Dominguez was the inspiration with 15 points from his mercurial boot. Garbisi needs to watch that encounter back and study Dominguez's game management and how he led his team to victory.
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