Mighty Atom stuns Wales with last-minute dash to victory

By PETER JACKSON

Wales………………21pts

Tries: Watkin 28, Lake 51, Adams 69

Conversions: Biggar 28, 52, 69

Italy ………………..22pts

Tries: Padovani 79

Conversions: Garbisi 80+1

Penalties: Garbisi 13, 32, 57; Padovani 16, 34

Done it! Italy second row Nicolo Cannone celebrates victory

Edoardo Padovani breaks for the line to score the winning try

PICTURES: Getty Images

ONCE they had paid due homage to the return of their gladiator-in-chief, the faithful sat back to see Wales honour his presence by taking Italy to the cleaners, as per usual.

The way they saw it, the novice full-back dredged up from the depths of the French Second Division, would be the first to go. How could Ange Capuozzo, surely the tiniest tot ever to be chosen as a last line of Six Nations defence, survive the bombardment which would come raining down all around him?

In their craving for a decisive win at the end of a trying six weeks, the home fans looked at Little Ange and assumed the Welsh bombardiers would make short work of him. Nobody stopped to think that, at 5ft 7in and barely 11st, he might just measure up perfectly for an occasion of biblical dimension.

Wales had their Goliath as provided by the latest coming of Alun Wyn Jones. So Italy came armed with their own David, except that no-one saw him coming, least of all those massed in front of him on the pitch and the multitude basking in the sunshine off it.

Capuozzo, restricted hitherto to baling his compatriots out of a couple of crises, knew when he got his hands on the ball with not much more than 90 seconds left, the time had come for his Mighty Atom trick.

Scanning the immediate vicinity and deciding to chance his arm in spite of all those red jerseys required a lot of courage. Ending their seven-year famine would take something which the grand old tournament had not seen for a very long time.

Without a sling or a stone, Capuozzo dared to take Wales by surprise, picking off opponents on a ghostly arc of a run towards the right touchline. Straightening, he so bemused Josh Adams as to leave the likeliest Welsh saviour flat on his backside before applying the perfect execution.

Had he gone for the corner, the Azzurri's will-o'-the-wisp would probably have got there but that meant running the risk of losing the match. Everything would hinge on the conversion and so his inside pass to Eduardo Padovani allowed the galloping right wing to make Paolo Garbisi's winning shot infinitely less demanding.

As if by magic, the Dragons had disappeared in a puff of smoke. As if that wasn't enough, Capuozzo had the presence of mind to ensure that there would be no reprieve, that Garbisi only had to hold his nerve to ensure that, after 36 straight defeats, Italy had won in the Six Nations for the first time since Murrayfield in February, 2015.

Wales will swear that substitute loosehead Wyn Jones scored what would have been the decisive bonus-point try a few minutes before Capuozzo's wizardry. The TMO, Joy Neville, saw nothing to overturn referee Andrew Brace's no-try decision.

What makes the result all the more shocking is that, in the final analysis, each team got what they deserved. Italy had the best player on the field in Monty Ioane, they defended stoutly and when they were unhinged, Wales baled them out by fumbling at least two tries.

There can be no escaping the reality, that they were nowhere near good enough, even for the perennial chopping blocks. Flat at the start, they wound up flattened, void of direction and pace for long periods.

Adams almost saved them with his solo try and he deserves huge credit for passing his man-of-thematch medal, awarded prematurely, to the more deserving Capuozzo. Nobody knew whether he passed it on to Ioane.

It is hard to wonder how much the pre-match emphasis marking Jones' unique 150th appearance, Biggar's 100th and the fuss surrounding both landmarks, contributed to what head coach Wayne Pivac identified as “a lack of energy”.

All that nostalgia sloshing around every tier of the citadel seemed to have an impact which the hosts could have done without. It was almost as if the perennial wooden-spoonists sensed the Welsh assumption that Alun Wyn's big day would be a winning one, as a matter of course.

Instead the supposedly hopeless outsiders took gradual advantage of a strangely subdued Welsh start. They did so, what's more, with ominously little discomfort in the course of exploiting their opponents' chronic inability to get going from the start.

It took the sight of two long-range missiles bisecting their posts to rouse Wales from their torpor.

Whenever first Owen Watkin and then Dewi Lake scored the tries to put the deposed champions ahead, Italy responded by picking them off with penalties.

And then, when all hope appeared to have gone and they needed something far more ambitious than a shot at goal, Capuozzo provided a glorious reminder to neutrals watching the world over, that even in a muscle-bound arena, a flyweight can still stop a whole herd of super-heavyweights…

Class act: Josh Adams gives his Man of the Match medal to Ange Capuozzo