I think you must be getting confused, because I said "Italy are doing just enough to justify their continued inclusion".JP14 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 15, 2020 1:21 pmYou're sweeping generalisations undermine your argument quite frankly. yes it's true Negri, Polledri and Steyn were all born outside of Italy but let's look at the Scottish team that beat them, the following players were all born out of Scotland:Tiglon wrote: ↑Sun Nov 15, 2020 11:19 amThe other side of that argument is that the 3 back rowers you mention were all born outside of Italy and had their rugby education until at least 20 outside Italy.JP14 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 15, 2020 10:54 am Georgia need more regular game time against big competition, whilst Italy are demonstrating promising improvement that I feel will warrant their retention in the Six Nations, few nations can field a better back row than Negri, Steyn & Polledri and I hope Garbezi continues his development as the flyhalf the Azzurri have waited decades for.
So are Italy improving because they are playing in the 6N, or are they getting better/luckier at finding and bringing in imports?
Georgia clearly aren't ready for the 6N yet but need more exposure to top level rugby at both club and international level. If they get this, they probably have more potential than Italy because Georgians actually want to play rugby, whereas Italians all want to play football hence most of their best players growing up in Argentina, South Africa, UK etc.
Italy are doing just enough to justify their continued inclusion, but I can't be the only one getting bored of Italy almost being a sort of adequately bare minimum competitive team for 20 years by rummaging around the rugby playing nations for rejects or Italian heritage. They will never be much more because their children simply do not play rugby. Georgia have the chance to bring more to the sport if we let them.
Oli Kebble (South Africa)
Duhan van der Merwe (South Africa)
Sam Skinner (England)
Nick Haining (Australia)
Blade Thomson (New Zealand)
Chris Harris (England)
James Lang (England)
WP Nel (South Africa)
Hamish Watson (England)
You say the "children don't want to play rugby" yet their Italian U20s team has been resurgent in recent years with Garbezi, centre Federico Mori and their impressive loosehead Danolo Fischetti being a part of recent U20s sides who all performed considerably well in yesterday's fixture.
I'm all for Georgia getting more exposure and becoming a regular Tier 1 nation, but to suggest that Italy need throwing out of the Six Nations is a tired, baseless comment you would expect to see on Facebook or the Daily Mail comment section.
Your original point was that the Italy back row is evidence that exposure to the 6N over 20 years has improved them as a rugby playing nation. My response was that these 3 players would be no better or worse than they are now if Italy had never been in the 6N because they didn't develop their talent in Italy. Talking about other countries that do the same makes zero difference to this argument. The fact that Scotland have many foreign-born players is irrelevant to Italy.
The Italy U20 team finished 11th in the 2008 U20 World Championship. They finished 9th in 2019. Whether that is a significant improvement or not is purely subjective.
The Italy senior team itself won inclusion to the 6N by recording 3 victories over tier 1 nations in 1997 and 2 more in 1998. Between 2000 and 2016 they beat a tier 1 nation every year apart from 5. In the past 4 years they have recorded 0. They were invited to the 6N because they were capable of regularly winning against such opponents - they no longer are. When you look at actual facts, they have not improved, as tempting as it is to keep saying "Ooooh didn't they look promising while they lost that match" every single season.
I really hope this next crop of youngsters is the turning of the tide, and they are showing enough, as I have said a few times now, to still deserve inclusion at this time. However, if you think they have improved since joining the 6N you are buying into a lie.