'This is not an excuse, but it's the reality': New Italy boss Quesada

Gonzalo Quesada has said he is “completely confident” in his side after his first game as Italy’s head coach.

Italy fell to their narrowest ever defeat to England at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome in round one of the Guinness Six Nations, and while it was encouraging for the Azzurri, it did highlight areas the Argentinian needs to work on ahead of a trip to Dublin next week.

The former Stade Francais boss was not interested in making excuses after the 27-24, but was looking at positives, one of which was the fact that he will have more time to work with the team and prepare for their upcoming games.

Speaking after the match, he described the limited amount of time he had with his squad leading into the Six Nations, which put Italy on the back foot as they are the only team with a new head coach.

While Quesada conceded the challenge is going to get much harder next week when Italy play Ireland at the Aviva Stadium fresh from a resounding victory over France, he said it is not negotiable that his side seek to play better rugby than they did against England.

“The only thing which is for me not negotiable is that we want to be better,” the Italy boss said after the match.

“We want to play better rugby than we did today. Because we know that we can be better.

“This is not an excuse, but it’s the reality- we prepared for the game with basically two training sessions last week and just one more week of preparation leading into this afternoon.

“We now know much better where to focus next week and definitely the first goal is to improve as we are going to play in a much tougher environment in Dublin against an Ireland team that scored 40 points against France.

“England made us play their game, the game they wanted in the second-half, but apart from that, I’m completely confident in the team after today’s game.”