Brunel will put his own stamp on Italian job

ITALY MIGHT just have found a spiritual soul-mate in new coach Jacques Brunel. Appointed on November 1st, the 58-year-old Frenchman succeeded Nick Mallett and has since set about familiarising himself with the players at his disposal, the domestic structures that frame the sport within the country, and also keeping tabs on the professional franchises in the RaboDirect Pro12, the Heineken Cup and the Amlin Challenge Cup.

Brunel possesses clarity of purpose that isn’t clouded by romantic fancy.

He is pragmatic in his appraisal of the virtues and vices of the Azzurri and also Italian rugby’s current standing in the international community.

He is prepared to tread what he believes is a clearly defined pathway that can make Italy contenders for the Six Nations Championship “in the next two to three years”. Proving substance to that bold statement theoretically begins this weekend, but assessing Brunel’s impact will be a longer undertaking. Although he has selected a squad for the Six Nations that includes four new caps, a handful of training camps is not sufficient to remould the national side in terms of style or patterns.

He acknowledges that he must rely on the development work being conducted at club level, pointing out: “We can’t improve players in the three weeks we have with them; we don’t have enough time. The atmosphere can improve someone and give him confidence, but his level is set beforehand.”

It is a reasonable representation of the task he faces.

While the Italian pack draws favourable comparison with their counterparts in elite Test rugby, their back play is considered a weakness, labouring under a pedestrian orthodoxy. Brunel knows that to foster his ambition for the national team he has to recalibrate the playbook.

“You need a team that is dangerous in every department, so, effectively, it’s fair to say that right now the team is a little unbalanced. We have forwards who are able to compete with the best, but behind them there is still room for improvement to be able to impose ourselves or have the strength in the backs to perform to the highest level.

“So we’re going to try to rebalance the team, to implement a sense of spirit, to create freedom, to give a free hand to this three-quarter line so that they develop self-confidence.”

Born in Courrensan (south-west France), he played for Grenoble and Carcassone before joining Auch, first as a player (12 years) and then a coach (seven years).

He then decamped to US Colomiers in 1995 and three years on led the French club to outright victory in European Conference (a precursor of the Amlin Challenge Cup). Twelve months ater and he was in charge of the Colomiers team that lost to Ulster in the European Cup final at Lansdowne Road.

He briefly moved to Pau, before, in 2001, he joined the French national set-up as forwards coach in the Bernard Laporte regime. France reached two World Cup semi-finals in his six years (2001-2007), won two Grand Slams and four Six Nations titles.

Brunel then accepted an invitation to fulfil the head coaching role at Perpignan and in 2008 led them to the French Top 14 Championship title.

Last year, the club made the penultimate stage of the Heineken Cup, losing to the Northampton Saints.

The Federazione Italiana Rugby (FIR) decided that they would not renew Mallett’s contract which expired after last year’s rugby World Cup in New Zealand.

Despite making Italy more consistently competitive and chaperoning them to a first victory over France in the Six Nations, the South African had enjoyed only nine victories in 42 matches.

Brunel was approached, considered the offer for several weeks and realised he would not get another opportunity to coach at Test level. It was the tipping point in his decision.

Mallett departed to be replaced by the Frenchman to examine the sport’s structures; he already knew most of the playing personnel. The acclimatisation process is now over.

“My impression hasn’t changed. I’ve known the Italian group a bit for several years now and I’ve been able to follow their progress. These last two months weren’t about discovering the players because I already knew them more or less.

“It has been mostly about discovering Italian rugby, seeing the whole structure, the potential of the high-level network from the academy through the Italian top flight to the franchises. It’s a structure that has been well established with several different levels which should lead to a high level. It’s coherent, it’s new and it should work well.

“The academy and franchises have only been around two years; they need time to bear fruit, but we need regular contact and to work together.”

There’s little doubt that Brunel understands the fractured nature of preparing for international matches from his days with France. It colours his philosophy as he explained: “Training in the ethnological sense simply means taking them with you. You need to train with an objective, a way of feeling good with yourself because it’s quicker, more incisive, more concentrated and also simpler.

“You shouldn’t want to over-complicate your style of play because we don’t have enough time. Basically we need to synthesise things but without restricting their ambition from either their playing style or spirit. We have to find that balance.

“I hope we will surpass our potential, but you can’t kid yourself; to have good results you always need good players.

“The Six Nations is very important. We have to be ready very quickly. So it will be necessary to rely on the majority of the players who were at the World Cup and then in June (a tour to Argentina, Canada and the US) explore the potential mainly in young players.

“So we’ll continue now with the backbone of players from the World Cup and then, rest them and bring in the youngsters in June. We have to have confidence in players we have, as well as working with the clubs and young players for the future. So today we’ll exploit the strengths we have, always staying with the mentality that we have to prepare for tomorrow.”

The next six months will go a significant way to determining if Brunel can build a bridge between traditional Italian strengths and those he’d dearly love to develop.