Date: 3/11/13
Italy head coach Carlo Napolitano has named his 19 man squad to play Scotland at Derwent Park on Sunday (16:00)
Anthony Laffranchi believes that Italy’s strong performances against the home nations during their stay in England for Rugby League World Cup 2013 has given them a solid grounding from which to progress in the tournament ahead of a tough-looking game against Scotland at Derwent Park, Workington, on Sunday (4.00pm).
Italy’s good form started with a win against England in their RLWC2013 warm-up match, before going on to beat Wales in Cardiff on the tournament’s opening day, and Laffranchi wants his side to kick on after the victories.
“We are improving every week and the community within the players is improving,” said Laffranchi. “We are getting to know each other a bit more and obviously playing together on a weekly basis helps.
“Camp has been going great, obviously we have had a good couple of good weeks with the win against England and then we kicked the World Cup off with a good win against Wales, so it is definitely going well.
“We got into camp on the Wednesday afternoon and played England on the Saturday so we pretty much had only one training session together, so to come out and play like we did against England and Wales was great and it is something we can really build on.”
Laffranchi simply wants to see more of the same from his side, who face Scotland in potentially difficult conditions in Cumbria on Sunday, before their final group game, another tough match, against Tonga.
“The plan is to continue the roll we are on hopefully but we have still got to improve on last weekend and we will be going over game plans towards this back-end of the week,” said Laffranchi.
“We got a bit of a gist of the weather earlier in the week when we went to watch a football match and it was a bit chilly, so we will probably have to add another minus five or six degrees on that, and some rain, to be like Workington!”
“But everyone is acclimatising, we have been here two-and-a-half weeks now and the boys are getting used to it so I think we will be alright up there.
“Scotland have done well to hold Tonga out and to Scotland’s credit they fought hard and managed to get the win at the end of the day.
“We are in tough pool. Obviously we have got Scotland this week and then Tonga so it is going to be exciting times for the next couple of weeks.
“I think we have to give full credit to everyone behind the scenes getting the game running in Italy who have helped generate the qualification of the Italian team to this World Cup and now it is about all of us doing our heritage proud, and definitely we are doing Italian Rugby League, and Italy as a nation, proud as well.”
Tickets for the Scotland v Italy RLWC2013 Group C match are still available to purchase, from as little as £15 for adults and £7.50 for concessions. To buy your tickets, please either visitwww.eticketing.co.uk/rlwc or call our 24-hour hotline on 08448472013.
Italy Team to take on Scotland
Christophe Calegari
Chris Centrone
Cameron Ciraldo
Ben Falcone
Ryan Ghietti
Aidan Guerra
Anthony Laffranchi
Joshua Mantellato
Tim Maccan
Anthony Minichiello
Mark Minichiello
Raymond Nasso
Dean Parata
Joel Riethmuller
Brendan Santi
Kade Snowden
James Tedesco
Ryan Tramonte
Paul Vaughan
