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Italy make three changes for France encounter

Italy flanker Maxime Mbanda

Andrea Lovotti, Leonardo Ghiraldini and Maxime Mbanda have been included in Italy’s starting line-up for the Six Nations clash with France on Friday.

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Prop Lovotti and hooker Ghiraldini dropped to the bench for the thumping at the hands of Ireland last time out, but come back into the side in Marseille at the expense of Nicola Quaglio and Luca Bigi.

Conor O’Shea has also selected flanker Mbanda, who was named among the replacements in Dublin but gets his chance from the start at Stade Velodrome.

South Africa-born back-row Braam Steyn drops out of the squad after starting the 56-19 drubbing at the Aviva Stadium. 

The Azzurri and France have both lost their first two matches of the tournament.

 

 

 

Italy: Matteo Minozzi, Tommaso Benvenuti, Tommaso Boni, Tommaso Castello, Mattia Bellini, Tommaso Allan, Marcello Violi; Andrea Lovotti, Leonardo Ghiraldini, Simone Ferrari, Alessandro Zanni, Dean Budd, Sebastian Negri, Maxime Mbanda, Sergio Parisse.

Replacements: Luca Bigi, Nicola Quaglio, Tiziano Pasquali, George Fabio Biagi, Federico Ruzza, Edoardo Gori, Carlo Canna, Jayden Hayward.

 

 

 

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J
JW 1 hour ago
Why England's defence of the realm has crumbled without Felix Jones

This piece is nothing more than the result of revisionist fancy of Northern Hemisphere rugby fans. Seeing what they want to see, helped but some surprisingly good results and a desire to get excited about doing something well.


I went back through the 6N highlights and sure enough in every English win I remembered seeing these exact holes on the inside, that are supposedly the fallout out of a Felix Jones system breaking down in the hands of some replacement. Every time the commentators mentioned England being targeted up the seam/around the ruck or whatever. Each game had a try scored on the inside of the blitz, no doubt it was a theme throughout all of their games. Will Jordan specifically says that Holland had design that move to target space he saw during their home series win.


Well I'm here to tell you they were the same holes in a Felix Jones system being built as well. This woe is now sentiment has got to stop. The game is on a high, these games have been fantastic! It is Englands attack that has seen their stocks increase this year, and no doubt that is what SB told him was the teams priority. Or it's simply science, with Englands elite players having worked towards a new player welfare and management system, as part of new partnership with the ERU, that's dictating what the players can and can't put their bodies through.


The only bit of truth in this article is that Felix is not there to work on fixing his defence. England threw away another good chance of winning in the weekend when they froze all enterprise under pressure when no longer playing attacking footy for the second half. That mindset helped (or not helped if you like) of course by all this knee jerk, red brained criticism.

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