Italy can be a force in world rugby but need investment in structure, says Dewi Morris

Sky Sports pundit Dewi Morris believes that Italy have the ability to step up on the world stage, but can only do so through investment in their domestic game.

The New Year has ticked over and it’s time to look at 2015 in earnest. One of my hopes is that it is a year in which Italy find a way to grow into a genuinely strong rugby nation.

A man featuring on Sky Sports screens this coming Friday night has been a giant for them in the past and is proving a giant for Stade Francais this season. Sergio Parisse is one of the best players in world rugby at the moment.

They can’t carry on the way they’re going and expect to get different results in tournaments.

Parisse is putting together performances for Stade that have put them in second place in the Top 14. He has been a force on the world scene for some time but I get the feeling he’s ramped up his level ahead of the Six Nations in preparation for the World Cup later in the year.

It has now been 15 years since Italy recorded a famous victory over Scotland in their first match of the newly formed Six Nations, but besides a sprinkling of victories in the time since, they haven’t met the potential promised by those wins.

What Italy need is consistency and momentum, and that is difficult to build when your star players never play together. If Italy are to become a side capable of regularly winning games, one thing they need to do above all else is to invest in the club sides so that their big names are playing for local sides.

Treviso and Zebre are currently at the bottom of the PRO12 with little to suggest that will change in the coming months. It’s difficult to blame the coaches and players because they’re competing against some world-class structures – it’s up to Italy’s rugby body to help them compete at that level.

If you want an example of what a bit of investment will do, take a look at Connacht. They brought in Pat Lam, and with his expertise and relationships he was able to lure Mils Muliaina to the club. A player like Muliaina puts fans in seats, which on a basic level means more money for the organisation, but a more important by-product of that signing is that young kids are taking more interest in the team, which grows the sport in the region.

Let’s not forget that not long ago the top brass in Irish rugby were looking to scrap the region as a whole, now Connacht are on track to qualify for the Champions Cup in their own right, having relied on Leinster’s automatic inclusion to qualify for the Heineken Cup in the past. That is a huge turnaround for a small club. Included in that success is the rise of Robbie Henshaw, a man who came through the Connacht academy and looks to be one of the stars of the future for Ireland.

Direction

Connacht's success should be prompting Italian rugby to have a look at what can be done to improve the sport in their country. The effects are far-ranging, and may take years to bear fruit, but if rugby is going to compete in football-mad Italy they need to ensure that their domestic sides are not the whipping boys on the European circuit.

Live Top 14 Rugby Union

You can’t blame Parisse and Martin Castrogiovanni for plying their trade where they can in order to cash in on their talents, but couldn’t there be some sort of package offered to them that would incentivise them to play out the last year or two of their careers at an Italian club?

There are of course other factors to take into consideration, not least the fact that Sergio Parisse has a life in Paris now, but there needs to be some sort of plan or vision from Italian rugby in place.

They can’t carry on the way they’re going and expect to get different results in tournaments.

Italy have a bruising pack of forwards and in Kelly Haimona and Edoardo Gori, a half-back pairing that gives direction to the backline. Haimona and Gori play for domestic clubs in Italy, which is a positive start for Italian rugby. The tools are there for Italy to compete on the international stage beyond being happy with two wins per tournament. They just need the structure in place, and as with anything, that structure needs to start from the bottom.