RUGBY: GERRY THORNLEYhears Italy scrum coach Carlo Orlandi explain how the scrum is always their starting point

THE ITALIANS arrived in Dunedin yesterday, setting up camp for the rest of the week in the north of the city at the hotel normally reserved for the All Blacks’ opposition over the years; indeed the same hotel where Ireland stayed in 2002.

Aside from the white RWC 2011 coach in the driveway, you know it’s the Italian base from the basket of sweets on the desk of the hotel foyer, which are neatly arranged in the green, white and red colours of the Italian flag.

A charming touch, and soon the Azzurri press officer is conducting a chilled and low-key media briefing, along with his translators, where needed.

“You wanna heara bout oura scrum, eh?” is the gist of their message. In putting their best foot forward on this count too, they wheeled out both their assistant forwards/scrum coach Carlo Orlandi and hooker Leonardo Ghiraldini.

In everything they do, their scrum is a reference point.

“I don’t know which kind of match this will be, but Ireland will want to have a lot of possession and I think they will not kick a lot,” ventured Orlandi.

“Maybe if we have a good defence they will make a mistake, and for us it is a scrum. And I don’t know, but if we have a free-kick, maybe we take a scrum. Sometimes we decide on a scrum because we must start from our best part.”

Orlandi laughed loudly as he added: “Maybe we don’t have a big gun, but we have a gun, and our gun is the scrum. I don’t know how many bullets we have in the gun, but we have a gun.”

The bespectacled Orlandi is old school Azzurri frontrow, having played 42 times at hooker for the Italians in their golden age from 1992 through to their inaugural Six Nations campaign in 2000. His partnership with Massimo Cuttitta and Franco Properzi was the fulcrum of their pack, and started 25 Tests en bloc.

Having coached the Italy Under-19 and Under-21 sides, he was co-opted onto the Azzurri management ticket by John Kirwan in 2003. In explaining what he sought to bring, Orlandi said: “The first thing is the passion, it’s not only the technical things, because you can improve the strength, you can improve the velocity, but the forwards have to think how to – this is a hard word – but to destroy the player in front of you. And I’m very lucky because in the scrum they have this mentality and they try to do that, and of course I use some of my history,” he said with a laugh.

“And to play together, for the scrum is not one against one. It is eight against eight.”

Looking ahead to Sunday’s match, Orlandi is not as outspoken as coach Nick Mallett, and is more content to play the role of underdog. “Their team is a good team,” he said of Ireland, “and they want not only to beat Italia, but also arrive to a semi-final and to do something special. I hope it is very difficult because they must play against us on Sunday, but if they play like they did against Australia, it is very, very, difficult for us to win.

“But, they must play very well. All the matches are different. They start zero-zero, and you try to do your game plan, try to do something special because the World Cup is special, and you need to play in a special way.”

Orlandi was also a little more reserved in agreeing with Mallett that the Italian frontrow is better than Ireland’s. “On paper yes, but in all the match you must show the world if it is true, or not true. But if we play well, I think we have a little percentage more.”

Orlandi also accepted that to have any chance of winning they had to translate that supposed edge into Sunday’s scrums. “Not only scrum but yes, for our play, we need it. I agree.”

What else do they need?

“A good lineout, because the Irish lineout is good, but for us the most important is to have a good defence, because they have good players to do something to score a try. For us it is very difficult to score tries. Ireland maybe don’t score a try for the first 70 minutes, but (Brian) O’Driscoll arrive and change angle or one pass and score. Maybe we don’t have the player like that. We have maybe only Sergio Parisse. Ireland have (Jonathan) Sexton, O’Driscoll or (Séan) O’Brien, who can do this.”

It is also clear from listening to Orlandi’s broken but eminently understandable “Inglese” that the Azzurri brains trust have targeted this game for the last few years in the same way Kidney and co had targeted the Australia game, although they too had always maintained it would come down to this shoot-out.

“We work all the time to prepare but not only the physical, but video sessions. They (the Italian players) know better this adversary, they know very well; they know the (Irish) lineout, their scrummage, the position of an Irish prop, how they use an arm. We do a lot of work and study on this opposition.”

Even the 71-times capped Clermont Auvergne centre Gonzalo Canale is on message.

“We know very well how strong our forwards are,” he said through an interpreter. “Even if we are maybe not running the ball so many times we are available to develop the team game plan. Certainly, sometimes, from a back’s point of view, it’s not so much fun to play in a team so strong in the forwards but it’s more important to win as a team than to touch the ball as many times as we can.”

Although Italy eventually secured their bonus-point, fourth try in the 66th minute against the USA Eagles on Tuesday, they were made to work for it, and mindful of having only a five-day turnaround to Sunday’s game, Mallett was unable to empty his bench as early as he’d intended to.

“Two more days of recovery wouldn’t be bad,” admitted Ghiraldini, “but we’ve been together and trained a lot over the last month so it’s not an issue.”

He says they will also take comfort from having pushed Ireland so close in February’s 13-11 defeat in Rome.

“It was a game where we showed if we stick to our game plan we can beat anybody in the world. We showed that against France when we beat them, and also against Wales.”

Four years ago, Italy were one kick away from a first quarter-final when losing their final pool game 18-16 to Scotland, but Orlandi believes this team is better, “because we are all thinking together like one and our direction is at the stadium on Sunday at 8.30”.

Four more years of playing in the Six Nations and last season in the “Celtic League” has also given them more “maturity”.

Citing the historic win over France as something of a landmark, Orlandi added: “I think it’s right for the players to have a big success because they work a lot. It’s right for the players, families, supporters, for our union . . . and it’s very important for all the Italian people that know rugby. I think if we win on Sunday it’s a big step for all Italian rugby men.”

Perhaps the biggest ever? “Yes, of course. We need to write a new page of history.

“We need it.”