Rome 6 Nations Tour 2013

The boys before their joint training session with Appia Rugby Club.

Read Charlie Frost's tour report and view images from the tour here.

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Click here to view Peter Fay's images from the Rome 6 Nations Tour: http://goo.gl/Olqcd

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Sub-16 - Rome 6 Nations Tour 2013

Report by Charlie Frost

After a very early wake-up call, all 19 players travelled to the airport in the morning darkness. The group was slowed down by the fairly predictable late arrival of a certain Duarte Fernandes, nevertheless, it still gave them time to indulge in their early morning McDonalds breakfast, much to their delight.  With the two-and-a-half hour flight behind us, we arrived in Rome, where we were met by a coach taking us to our hotel, opposite the busy Termini station.

The plan for the day (as it was still only around 11 o´clock) was to do a bit of sight-seeing and then play some Rugby at a local club. First, however, the team was faced with the challenge of deciding which delicious Italian food to partake of before setting off. Disappointingly, McDonalds seemed to be the only option for the majority of the squad. Crammed full of healthy food, we took the metro into the centre of town and took a stroll to the Spanish Steps and the Trevi Fountain, where we discovered yet more healthy food in the many gelatarias scattered around and met some of Rome’s persuasive informal sector workers. We thus regrouped again armed with a variety of clothes, toys and lasers. This all came to an end when the troops were sent back to the hotel to prepare kit for the training session and game we had lined up with our Italian friends at Appia Rugby Club.

The club is based in an area of parkland right next to some ruins of an ancient Roman aqueduct and was certainly the muddiest pitch any of us had ever seen, although unfortunately it hadn’t rained for a while and the mud was of the hard variety. Once we started the training we made another discovery, that there was a little bit of a communication problem as neither of our main Latin-based languages seemed to be able to make sense to the other, however, we eventually got the hang of the drill and soldiered on. To finish the training, we played a game, where the teams were mixed, with many players showing skills and levels of aggression not yet witnessed by their team-mates this year - Keenan Almeida made a proper tackle, for example, and Man of the Match, Francisco Ermida, some storming forward surges! After the match we were treated to some much needed Italian hospitality.

There was much excitement at the start of day two, not only did we have a mouth-watering program before us, we were also introduced to a sexy pink négligée, which was to be awarded to the latest amongst us who revealed the most glaring lack of common sense. There was no shortage of candidates, although Keenan Almeida was often all on his own in the outstanding candidate category. We also had another tour ritual explained to us, namely, the ‘Grenade Call’, whereby if the command “GRENADE!” was issued, whatever the situation, by one of the tour commandants, all troopers had to seek ground cover immediately, with the last to do so suffering the obligatory 10 public press-ups. The Clothes Peg Challenge rules were also introduced and this all gave us plenty to ponder as we emerged into the brilliant sunshine of a glorious spring day in the Italian capital.

We formed a cohort and proceeded to the Coliseum, marveled at the Forum, the Pantheon and the Palatine Hill, before wandering through the Piazza Argentino for a pasta lunch in a nice little backstreet restaurant that we had all to ourselves. After lunch, we marched along the banks of the Tiber to the magnificent Stadio Olimpico, where we joined 75,000 other 6 Nations pilgrims to watch Italy play Ireland. The atmosphere was absolutely electrifying and it was amazing to see both Irish and Italian fans mingling together in festive spirits. With no segregation in the stadium and Ireland looking shaky from the start, however, it was the Italian fans who set the place buzzing, with their rousing anthem and ear-splitting chants of “I-tal-ia!, I-tal-ia! I-tal-ia!”.

On the pitch the gladiators in blue went on to record their first ever 6 Nations win over the Irish to send their adoring fans home in a state of delirium. As for us, we had another forced march back along the Tiber to get the Highlander pub, where we had exclusively reserved a snug back room with a massive flat-screen TV and were to watch the England vs. Wales game, in the end crammed in with another 20 or so Rugby fans who got there first.

As the Welsh destroyed England’s Grand Slam dreams, the smile on Dr Jones’s face became broader and broader, at roughly the same rate as Mr Mount’s accent turned strangley Scottish.

The final encounter saw Scotland playing France, creating a tense atmosphere in the pub between a kilted Scotsman and a certain Martial ‘frog spawn’ Rodrigues, who had the last laugh as Les Bleus finished the stronger (but still won the wooden spoon, hahaha) before we headed back to our hotel at the end of our extraordinary day in Rome.

The following morning, we managed to upset Mr Mount (and also possibly the new Pope) by sleeping in and not leaving enough time to do the Vatican before catching our bus to the airport, where our check-in tedium was enlivened by a chance encounter with several members of the Irish team!

Evin Fay experienced the highlight of his tour meeting “his heroes, the guys I literally look up to”. We all got some autographs and photos from the men in green. At one point, the Irish Rugby superhero, Brian O’Driscoll, tried his hardest to hide from us behind a post, but like the Italians at the stadium the previous day, we managed to pin him down and, to his great credit, he duly posed for some snaps and signed autographs.

And that was pretty much it, we all had a lot of fun and plenty of memories to last us from our time together in the Eternal City. Many thanks to the organizers, our parents, fundraisers and our teachers for making it possible.