Rolling mauls, rucks and scrums, Italian style

It started as a bit of a what-if game.
Alex got a text at 7am from Jason saying the Wallabies were playing Italy in Rome that afternoon.
She went back to sleep.
But we both kept thinking, well…. what-if we actually went to Rome today?
What-if there was a train?
What-if there were tickets?
What-if we could find the stadium?
What-if we went and there were actually people who turned up to a rugby game in Italy?

To hell with it, we thought as we made a mad dash for the 11.15 am train from Perugia (got ready in about ten minutes – a new record for us) and two-and-a-half hours later, rolled into Roma Termini.
No time for lunch or to check out Italy’s biggest Zara store.
No time to do anything, except run for the metro and the Flaminio metro stop (about 15 minutes from Termini).
Once on the metro, we realized the game was due to begin in an hour and a) we didn’t have tickets, b) didn’t know if it was sold out, c) saw loads and loads of Aussies, Italians and assorted English speakers on their way to the stadio (mysteriously, no Americans).
Thanks to a brief internet search about 15 minutes before we ran for the bus (to get us to the train station in Perugia), an old website page (featuring an Italy-England game from 2001) had given us moderately clear directions to the ground.
Metro to Flaminio, Tram number two to the stadium (Alex even saw a guy she went to uni with on the tram, although they both ignored each other!).
Turns out we’d actually almost been there before.
The stadium is just 500 metres from Rome’s Parca Della Musica where Manth had spent two days at the Rome Film Festival (Well, one day had been spent at the actual festival and the other was devoted to a prolonged negotiation with Italian bureaucracy in an ultimately successful attempt to organize accreditation).
So, we made it to the stadium and now just had to find tickets.
While there were lots of people at the ground, clearly Rugby isn’t THAT popular because there were dozens of scalpers touting their wares as soon as we stepped off the number two tram.
Around the corner, there was also an official ticket office with tickets still available.
After running the gauntlet through a group of extremely insistent, nay aggressive, scalpers, we purchased our tickets (legally) with 15 minutes to spare before kick off.
€25 a pop, on the try line and surrounded by Italian fans.
At first we were a little worried.
There were A LOT of Italians surrounding us, and we’ve heard the stories about how “passionate” they can get about sport.
But that’s “calcio” - the world game - and ummmm, this was Rugby - played well by three nations and ahhh, dare we say, moderately well by those in Europe.
As it turns out, we, and the handful of random Aussies sitting within a ten row radius of us, had nothing to worry about.
These were the best behaved Italians we’ve ever seen.
Almost overwhelmingly male, the Italian fans had donned the Italian Rugby uniform (maybe this was the uniform in Australia too, when it was still known as the gentlemen’s game). Collared business shirts, blazers, dress trousers, shining shoes and TIES. They were all wearing ties.
Sure they kept it lively by shouting and cheering.
But it was all so “un Italian” no one stood up and got in the way, no one invaded our personal space, no one even really gesticulated in a threatening way.
It was also unlike other Rugby games.
We also didn’t see a single person drinking a beer (or eating a TG Milner meat pie for that matter), although there were dozens of gelatos getting the once over (don’t think we’ll ever get used to middle aged men proudly licking ice creams at any time of the day or night).
Turns out they were actually selling beer.
It was just that no one was buying and we found out why when Alex went to score us a couple of Peronis only to find out they were flogging them for €5 a pop (for a can). That’s something like $AUS 8 each. Way out of our price range so it was a dry match for us too.
The good news was that Australia won the game, albeit unconvincingly.
Still, we had fun (and provided entertainment to our Italian neighbours) by screaming our support to Lottie, Matty and the other ones. We even got a laugh from the Italian guys in front of us when Matty scored a try and we shouted that we still loved him even though he’d left his wife and kids for a Jeans West model.
The game ended and it was time to head back to Perugia, where we arrived tired and hungry at 10.30pm after a three hour train trip.
Thank god the pizzerias don’t shut till 11pm!