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Six Nations sensation Capuozzo on why he signed for Toulouse

Ange Capuozzo slices through the Welsh defence to set up a famous Italian score (Photo by Alex Livesey/Getty Images)

Italy’s Guinness Six Nations sensation Ange Capuozzo has explained why he has chosen to sign for Toulouse, a move confirmed this week by the French Top 14 giants.

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The youngster signed a three deal with Stade Toulousain that will keep him at the Stadium de Toulouse until 2025. Capuozzo has spent the last three seasons at Grenoble before bursting onto the Test scene in dramatic fashion earlier thus year.

The lithe outside back was a nightmare to defend against, his late match winner against Wales in the Principality Stadium the standout moment of Super Saturday back in March.

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Head over to daysbrewing.com and use the code RUGBYPASS15 to get 15% off a case of their 0.0% beers

“It was an easy decision to make,” the 23-yer-old told RMC in France.

“From a personal point of view, I’m coming to a time in my life when I need to put myself in difficulty, to leave and get out of my comfort zone. After these three years in Grenoble, it was the right time, at the right age, to see something else and discover another environment.”

“The fact of having spent these three years and having the possibility of marking the club with my imprint, it would also have been a dream. But this possibility touching the highest level in the world was even more of a dream. I have to give it a shot. I feel like I’m at the end of a process, my head freed .”

It seems he will in competition with new teammates Thomas Ramos and Melvyn Jaminet, although he could well play on the wing as well as at his preferred fullback. Despite have a frame more like that of a professional footballer, Capuozzo does fear putting himself in ‘danger’.

“I put myself in danger, I will have to question myself, that I work on my personal environment, that I do pay attention to all the little details of my life. It will make me grow. This competition does not scare me at all, on the contrary. I know it will be a very big challenge, but it will make me progress too.”

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J
JW 5 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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