In 2024, Italy opened with a 24-27 loss to England and while they also fell to Ireland a week later, by the time the Championship closed they had enjoyed their best year ever with two wins and a draw from their matches against Scotland, France, and Wales.
It means that Italy coach Gonzalo Quesada has been pushing the message that good things will come if they continue to believe in themselves and their style of rugby.
“We have to keep confidence in ourselves,” Page-Relo told us. “It's our first game. It was difficult but we lost against a big team. Scotland are fifth in the rankings. We need to be confident for the for the next games.
“After the game we were very disappointed because we lost. We watched the video of the game, and we saw we had chances to win, we had openings, but we didn’t make the right choice or maybe we made errors.
“There were times when we had three versus two or three versus one and we didn’t time the pass right and that meant it was difficult to break the line.”
Wales ready to roar
Italy will enjoy the comforts of home when they face Wales at Rome’s Stadio Olimpico on Saturday.
Warren Gatland’s side will be desperate to recover from their 43-0 defeat to France in Paris on the opening night of the tournament, and they will also be wanting to make up for their 24-21 defeat in Cardiff 12 months ago.
Last year Page-Relo came off the bench on the 50-minute mark to help his team close out their second consecutive victory in the Welsh capital. In doing so he faced Wales number nine Tomos Williams, a player he will come up against again with both players named in their starting teams.
“I’ve followed him for a long time, because I'm younger than him, and he has played for Wales for many years,” Page-Relo said. “I know he’s an intelligent scrum-half. He's a tactical player too, so we will have to follow him all the game.
“It is a big match for us, and we have a lot of motivation. We are expecting a great game and a good performance at the breakdown and in the one versus ones. It will be a good game and very physical.
“They will come hard after this loss. When a team suffers such a big loss there is always a reaction.”
Rapid rise
While the 26-year-old Page-Relo has become a firm fixture in the Italy squad, it hides the fact that he only made his Test debut against Scotland in one of the Rugby World Cup warm-up matches.
The France-born Page-Relo qualifies for Italy through his maternal grandparents who hail from near Milan. It was Ange Capuozzo - pictured with Page-Relo above - who played matchmaker when he alerted the then-Italy coach Kieran Crowley that the scrum-half was open to the idea of committing to the Azzurri. After a phone-call, he joined the camp and made the squad for France 2023.
Page-Relo hails from L'Isle-Jourdain, a small town 30 minutes’ drive west of Toulouse. He moved to the city when he was 13 to join Toulouse’s famed academy and, after a loan spell with Carcassonne, he returned to the senior side and played 22 times for Les Rouges et Noires.
However, the presence of a certain Antoine Dupont meant he needed to look elsewhere for greater game time, but Page-Relo made the most of his time working with the current France captain, and he is aiming to put those lessons into place, starting with Wales on Saturday.
“It was cool to play with the with the greatest player who is a scrum-half like me,” he said. “I learned some tips from him, and it's so good to work with him.
“He's shy, but he shared a lot with the other guys. It's really interesting to work with him.
“I want to learn more and more. I want to establish myself at the number one as scrum-half, and I want to win a lot with Italy. Last year we had a really good tournament, and I want to do better year on year.”
Wales v Italy, Saturday 8th February, 14:15 GMT, Stadio Olimpico.
