No case for defence for Italy

Win pleases defence coach Ellis, despite conceding two late tries

Last updated: 14th March 2010   Subscribe to RSS Feed

No case for defence for Italy

Mallett: Not impressed

A lot of players played their worst games today and when you do that against France they will score a lot of tries

Nick Mallett
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Italy coach Nick Mallett described his side's performance in the 46-20 loss to France as "the worst match we've played for a year".

Les Bleus kept their Grand Slam dreams alive at the Stade de France with a fourth successive victory in this season's RBS Six Nations.

David Marty scored two of the home side's six tries while scrum-half Morgan Parra enjoyed an excellent day with the boot, kicking 16 points.

Although Italy did manage two late tries themselves, Mallett was left to lament a disappointing defensive display off the back of a win over Scotland.

Poor defence

"It was the worst match we've played for a year," he said. "We are pretty disappointed and our defence was very poor.

"A lot of players played their worst games today and when you do that against France they will score a lot of tries.

"They were made to look a lot better by our missed tackles but some of our players were well off their best.

"We have to be 100 percent to compete and we weren't - but I was very pleased with the two tries we scored."

The South African feels France will find it much tougher in their final game against England, though he predicts they will clinch the Grand Slam at home.

"I don't think they'll score tries that easily against England because we missed very simple tackles," he said. "But the French are a very good team, the best in this championship. They will win the Grand Slam."

Fly-half Craig Gower admitted the Italian players were disappointed with their performance, putting it down to a lack of enthusiasm.

"You can't miss those one-on one tackles against the French," he said. "It wasn't us. We didn't have that enthusiasm that we had in the last couple of weeks, which is disappointing.

"Obviously we wanted to play better than that. We've just got to forget about that and concentrate on Wales."

In contrast, France defence coach Dave Ellis was delighted with the home side's performance, admitting everything went to plan for an hour.

Pleased

"We were quite pleased with how we set up in the game but we sort of fell asleep a little bit in the last 10 minutes of the first half and it took us a while to wake up," he said.

"We more or less achieved what we wanted to.

"We conceded a couple of tries after we had made many changes, for example playing Morgan Parra at number 10. He hasn't got the habit of defending as a 10 from a scrum and he got caught out a couple of times.

"In general, if you had asked us before the game if we would score almost 50 points, we'd have taken it. For an hour of the game, everything went to plan."

Englishman Ellis, who is also defence coach at Guinness Premiership side London Irish, feels the side are now benefiting from the consistency in selection by coach Marc Lievremont.

"You could see today that the half-backs have played a number of times together and you could see the forward pack feel comfortable with those two running the show," he added.