Italy Assistant coach Marius Goosen - 'Uruguay's Manuel Ardao reminds me of David Pocock'

Comments from Italy assistant coach Marius Goosen on Thursday, the day after his side beat Uruguay 38-17 in Pool A at Stade de Nice.

Marius Goosen, assistant coach

On hooker Luca Bigi withdrawing from the match-day 23 moments before kick-off because of a muscular injury, and any other injury updates in the squad:

"He’ll go for some scans today, we’ll take it from there. We’re waiting for the medical report.

"Apart from that, there are no new injuries."

On how Italy turned things around after trailing Uruguay at half-time:

"We started off decently and then we put ourselves under pressure when Mitch [Michele Lamaro - captain and flanker] made that intercept pass. We were a little bit under the pump there, and from there we got those two yellow cards and suddenly pressure was on us.

"We didn’t finish as we would have liked in the first half but in all honesty the boys were quite calm at half-time, we just talked about what we needed to do.

"We came out firing in the second half, which is pleasing because easily this could have gotten away. A year ago, 18 months ago we probably would have lost that, but these boys have mentally made a massive shift."

On the 28-19 loss to Georgia in July 2022 being the catalyst for the team to become stronger mentally:

"The game that we lost against Georgia in Batumi a year ago was probably the turning point.

"We experienced that and obviously talked a lot about it; how to go about it if that happens again. That might have helped us.

"It’s a pretty young team still but they’ve played a few test matches together. They also realise that everything won’t go according to plan always, and that was the pleasing part in that second half - they found a way to win."

On Manuel Ardao, Uruguay’s blindside flanker:

"We were playing a little bit too much in our own half, giving their number six [Ardao] opportunities to turn us over, which he did brilliantly.

"He’s a master at that. There’s probably only two or three guys in world rugby at the moment that have the skill that number six has around the breakdown - like [David] Pocock used to have."

On playing New Zealand next, and what they learned from South Africa’s win against the All Blacks at Twickenham last month:

"We’ve got to find a way to pressure New Zealand. They will be in the same boat that we were in last night - it’s a must-win game for them as well.

"South Africa showed in that game at Twickenham what you can do if you pressure them.

"We will concentrate on what we’ve got to do. We’re a pretty dangerous team when we keep the ball in hand and go over five, six, seven phases when the defence starts becoming a little bit unstructured.

"That will be one of our focuses, ball retention at the breakdown."