Italy clash with Canada in Pool B of the Rugby World Cup at the Fukuoka Hakatanomori Stadium on Thursday, the first action of the tournament for Canada who are very much the underdogs with the bookmakers.
Italy v Canada, Thursday 26th September, Fukuoka, KO 09:45 (South African time)
Weather Forecast – Fukuoka
Referee: Nigel Owens
Assistant Referees: Wayne Barnes, Karl Dickson
TMO: Rowan Kitt
Italy
Italy opened their campaign against Namibia on Sunday and they came through with a 47-22 bonus point victory that saw them go top of Pool B. Italy still have the All Blacks and the Springboks to face so the going will get much tougher after this and they remain rank outsiders in the outright betting at around 750/1. T
Italy had started as 30 point favourites against Namibia and they led 21-7 at the break but still came up a touch short of where the pre-match handicap had been set. Allan, Tebaldi , Padovani, Canna, Polledri and Minozzi were the 6 Italy try scorers at the weekend whilst Nambia also crossed 3 times including the first and last try's of the game.
Canada
Canada came through the Repechage qualifying route after getting the better of Germany, Hong Kong and Kenya and they are ranked 22 in the world. They have appeared in 8 previous RWC finals and they made it to the knockout rounds back in 1991.
There is little in the way of recent form against tier 1 nations to work with when it comes to assessing their chances of being competitive. In recent warm ups Canada lost 38-13 to Fiji in Suva, 33-23 to Tonga in Lautoka and 20-15 to USA in Vancouver.
Canada finished bottom of their pool in RWC 2015, losing all 4 of their matches. They did pick up a couple of bonus points, 1 of which came from a 23-18 loss to Italy and the other in a 17-15 loss to Romania. In other games they were no match for Ireland (lost 50-7) and France (41-18).
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Line Ups
Italy: 15 Matteo Minozzi, 14 Tommaso Benvenuti, 13 Michele Campagnaro, 12 Jayden Hayward, 11 Giulio Bisegni, 10 Tommaso Allan, 9 Callum Braley, 8 Braam Steyn, 7 Jake Polledri, 6 Sebastian Negri, 5 Dean Budd (c), 4 David Sisi, 3 Simone Ferrari, 2 Luca Bigi, 1 Andrea Lovotti
Replacements: 16 Federico Zani, 17 Nicola Quaglio, 18 Marco Riccioni, 19 Federico Ruzza, 20 Maxime Mbandà, 21 Guglielmo Palazzani, 22 Carlo Canna, 23 Mattia Bellini
Canada: 15 Patrick Parfrey, 14 Jeff Hassler, 13 Ben Lesage, 12 Nick Blevins, 11 DTH van der Merwe, 10 Peter Nelson, 9 Gordon McRorie, 8 Tyler Ardron (c), 7 Lucas Rumball, 6 Michael Sheppard, 5 Josh Larsen, 4 Conor Keys, 3 Matt Tierney, 2 Eric Howard, 1 Hubert Buydens
Replacements: 16 Benoit Piffero, 17 Djustice Duru-Sears, 18 Jake Ilnicki, 19 Luke Campbell, 20 Matt Heaton, 21 Jamie Mackenzie, 22 Ciaran Hearn, 23 Andrew Coe
Head to Head
The teams have met 9 times with Italy winning 7 to Canada's 2.
The Canadian wins came back in 1983 and 2000.
Italy edged the RWC 2015 pool stage meeting 23-18 in Leeds and in RWC 2003 Italy won 19-14 in Canberra.
Betting – Handicap
Italy-20.5 points at 9/10
Canada +20.5 points at 9/10
Quotes are an average of what was on offer from a selection of bookmakers at the time of writing and are subject to change.
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Betting Angle
Italy should be too strong for Canada but the smaller teams have generally played better than expected and with Italy likely to manage resources ahead of the matches against the All Blacks and Springboks, I think that Canada can beat the current handicap.
Bet: 2 units Canada +19.5 at 9/10 WSB
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