Nick Mallett says smashing England in the tackle will be the key to an Italian victory at Twickenham today and the Italy coach expects tactics to go out of the window as two sides attempt to use brute force to break down each other's highly physical defences.
The South African agreed with the prediction of the England attack coach, Brian Smith, that the opening match of this year's Six Nations would be a "battle of the gain-line", saying he hoped to replicate the ferocious tackling of the southern hemisphere sides last autumn, which he saw as central to their convincing victories over Martin Johnson's side.
"They lost the three games in November because the teams they played against smashed them on defence. Even though they had the ball through six phases they kept on going backwards in the tackle," said Mallett yesterday. "There's no point Italy, with them playing the same way, not trying to smash them in the tackle. We've got to be physical in the tackle – you can talk as much as you want about tactics, but in the end the team that will win tomorrow is the side that goes forward in the contact points."
The former Springbok coach disagreed that England have been as hampered by the crackdown on rolling mauls in the experimental law variations as Italy but said he had been impressed with the adaptation to his side's style he saw in the autumn and refused to use the ELVs as an excuse for any poor performance today.
"Italy have always had a very good scrum, a competent lineout, and particularly one of the best rolling mauls in the world, along with Argentina, so when you take away you can't sit and moan about it, you've got to change the way you play and try and change the way you play to the best of your abilities," he said.
Mallett defended his decision to start the flanker Mauro Bergamasco at scrum-half ahead of the less experienced Capitolina scrum-half, Giulio Toniolatti, saying Twickenham was not the place to blood a player who has made only one substitute appearance at international level.
"It's 50-50 between saying let's pick a scrum-half who's never played a Test match or pick a guy who has played lots of Test matches and won't crack under the pressure. I don't think Mauro is going to crack under the pressure," he said.
Bergamasco is representative of a very experienced Italy side – their 670 caps are roughly double England's – but Mallett maintains experience counts for little if all you are experiencing is defeat: "Caps are important but for us victories are more important and we want to win the game."
England Saxons' meeting with Ireland A was called off due to a frozen pitch at Donnybrook in Dublin last night. The referee Jerome Garces made the decision a minute before the scheduled 7.35pm kick-off time on grounds of player safety, denying Danny Cipriani the chance of an outing with the visitors after being left out of Johnson's squad this week.
