Skipper wary of ‘brutal’ Italy

Still smiling after Saturday’s 11-9 thriller against England, Thomas said Italy’s performance against Ireland had been a “wake-up call” for his side as they build towards Saturday’s match in Rome.
 
“We’re under no illusions about how tough it’s going to be,” said Thomas, who was on the wing when Wales crashed and burned in Rome two years ago, the first of five losses in a wooden spoon winning season. “We’re not looking at revenge as such, that’s a harsh word. We’re just looking to go over there and win.”

The man they call “Alfie” knows it’s not easy to pull off an Italian Job these days.

“It’s going to be tough, we saw against Ireland that this Italy side play to their strengths in the forwards, the word ‘brutal’ comes to mind,” Thomas continued. “For some reason, we’ve got three away games in a row now, which is going to be a massive test for everyone. We’ve got the win over England, but we have to prove we’re mentally tough enough to win away from our Stadium and our crowd.”

Thomas said Wales had a few tricks up their sleeve ahead of the Italy: “We’ve all watched the video of Saturday’s game and you can see that we didn’t play rugby. In a way, it was good to win without playing well, and it also means that we haven’t shown anything for the Italians to analyse.”

Wales will be without Ryan Jones this Saturday after the replacement backrower injured a collarbone on Saturday, although rugged centre Sonny Parker may come back into the reckoning after making good progress with his neck injury.

On another note, Saturday’s win over England took Wales past Argentina into seventh place in the official IRB World Rankings.