Lorenzo Cannone with confidence against France
The words of Lorenzo Cannone
After a week we start again, at the Olimpico on Sunday 23 France arrives, to challenge a’Italy that after the victory over Wales still wants to impress. The Azzurri face the match with the awareness that they have a great team in front of them, but also with the confidence in their own means of those who know they can win important matches, as’è happened with Wales and as’è happened also this weekend with Benetton and Zebre, both winning over Ulster and Edinburgh. Lorenzo Cannone, Benetton’s and Italy’s third line, explained this from the Azzurri gathering: “Surely they are important injections of confidence. When we got together with the players back from the franchises on Sunday night the first thing we did è was to congratulate them. Two wins like thatè help to approach such an important week”
“We knew we had to win for so many reasons, and this success gave us so much confidence and awareness of our means. The weather was not the best and we had to adapt our game plan to the weather conditions. We showed some good things and some things to improve, and we are working on these toward France”
“We knew that on the day of the game the weather might not be conducive to the kind of game we usually play, but we got there ready because we had prepared both game plans: one in the dry, one in the rain. È it went well becauseé we were good in the footwork and becauseé we managed to be physically dominant, they were the keys to the game and we managed to bring them home. We know that with France they will be the ones who will try to pass us over, it will be up to us to be ready”.
“We have already talked about it among ourselves, we know they will come to Rome to challenge us up front and impose themselves, and we are working just to hold up from a physical standpoint. Last year I was injured, but I remember that in Lille we started very well against the French, then in the second half we were more ‘fit’ and we managed to put them under. We expect the best France this year, as always: the key thing will be not to concede easy turnovers, because in the broken game they are devastating. You can be in their 5 meters but if you lose the ball a moment later you can find yourself defending on your own goal line, we must not concede anything”.
