As they had done in Paris, Wales started brightly enough. Deep in Italian territory, scrum-half Tomos Williams kicked across for Josh Adams to gather near the corner post, but the ball proved too slippery for the winger to grab hold of. From the resulting scrum, Italy won a penalty to extinguish the visitors’ early threatening foray into their 22.
Fullback Tommaso Allan struck a penalty after six minutes to register the first points of the game after Wales went offside at a ruck. In rainy conditions, it seemed this might be an afternoon to deploy a kicking game.
Fly-half Ben Thomas hit back for Wales with a penalty of his own to make it 3-3 going into the second quarter. But the clock hadn’t quite reached 20 minutes when Italy, with the advantage from a scrum, attacked down the narrowest of blindsides: Paolo Garbisi following up a delightful show-and-go with a grubber kick that Ange Capuozzo was the quickest to reach and dot down.
Allan converted what was a splendid Azzurri try to take the Azzurri to a 10-3 lead. Garbisi then tried a drop goal from Wales’ 10m line that at first seemed ambitious, but actually fell only fractionally under the crossbar, suggesting the hosts would be happy to strike from almost anywhere on this wet day.
Azzurri head coach Gonzalo Quesada wouldn’t rue Garbisi’s miss for long: Allan took two penalty kicks in quick succession to make it 16-3 with half-time fast approaching. Warren Gatland’s team needed to do something meaningful, and fast, to avoid death by a thousand cuts at the boot of Perpignan playmaker Allan.
That almost happened when Williams again kicked through for Adams to touch down, only for the Cardiff man to be thwarted once more by the slippery ball. Another promising Welsh attack then came to naught when Adams’ pass for captain Jac Morgan down the left wing was brought back for being forward.
Ten minutes into the second half, Gatland introduced the Ospreys’ Dan Edwards at fly-half.
If Garbisi’s earlier drop goal attempt was ambitious, scrum-half Martin Page-Relo’s go at a penalty from well inside his own half an hour or so in was even more so – but equally as unlucky not to go over, hitting the upright. But Italy were chancing their arm, sitting comfortably as they were on a healthy 13-point buffer.
Moments later, a frustrating afternoon for Josh Adams was compounded by being shown a yellow card for a head-on-head tackle on Garbisi. Allan soon kept the Italian scoreboard ticking over with a penalty: 19-3.
Replacement back rower Aaron Wainwright, one of Wales’ most experienced players, underlined his impact when he battled his way over for a try. Edwards’ conversion attempt bounced back off the posts to leave it at 19-8 with ten minutes remaining.
But still Wales couldn’t stop giving away penalties. And Allan couldn’t stop punishing them, kicking his sixth from eight attempts from the tee to snuff out any notions of a Welsh revival at 22-8.
By this point, the hosts could afford to lose replacement prop Marco Riccioni to the bin after Italy repeatedly infringed with Wales in their 22. A minute later, they showed no indication of cleaning up their act, losing Dino Lamb to the sin bin as well, leaving them with 13 men and conceding a penalty try for their efforts: 22-15.
It did little to help Wales' cause, though, and having won a penalty of their own, Garbisi kicked the ball out to put the visitors out of their misery and begin blue celebrations in the Eternal City.
