All resolved on the FIR-GIRA front, agreement found, players back in Villabassa. What remains of this week of fire for the Italian rugby movement? To answer this question, it would be necessary to know the details of the agreement signed yesterday evening between the leaders of the Federation and the players' union. In fact, if until now figures at stake and various adjustments following more or less open negotiations have been known, now the only thing known about the epilogue of the story is that an agreement has been found. Point.
“The Italian Rugby Federation informs that, following the meetings of the past few days, an agreement has been reached with the players of the National Team to guarantee the resumption of the training session for the Rugby World Cup 2015. […]The agreement provides, in particular, an economic recognition for all the players summoned to the summer training meeting, above all in the name of the meritocratic principles repeatedly highlighted by FIR. [...] Now, the word goes to the field: all players have the full support of the entire movement to play a great Rugby World Cup and rediscover the serenity necessary for the growth of our sport."
This is an excerpt from the joint FIR-GIRA press release. This time there wasn't a war of communiqués and different versions of the same event. Community of intent in managing things in the family, a family where even if the relatives are snakes, it's better not to let everyone know what our problems are. If then, due to some error along the way, the problems come to the surface, then the important thing is that the solutions are not known. This epilogue of the story does not allow us to understand who won or who lost in the long and troubled negotiation between the desire for a meritocratic revolution that the Federation has tried to force and the economic (but not only) claims of the Azzurri.
Certain thing is who lost. All Italian rugby comes out of this quagmire even more battered than how it entered. What's more, he doesn't have time to put the patches in, but has to start over – with who knows what news – as if nothing had happened to get to the World Cup with his head as free as possible from any disturbance. The most probable outcome can only be that of the Tomasiano Gattopardo: to move, to scramble, to revolutionize everything and everyone and then never change, always remaining the same. In the case of Italrugby, remaining equal to oneself necessarily means remaining in the mediocrity that has always distinguished us, without ever having managed to get out of the swamp of the Serie B national teams.
The fifteenth place in the world rankings – the one that Gavazzi reproached the players on the occasion of the #portacirispetto protest – is the poor result of the federal policies adopted for fifteen years now and of which it has already been written on these pages together with competitive performance never at the required level. If the fault is not 50% and 50% between the players and the Federation, surely the percentages are not too unbalanced towards the faults of Gavazzi and his colleagues. Only the players always go on the field and if they have repeatedly demonstrated that they can play it in a single game, never having managed to win in a significant and minimally continuous way denotes faults that are also attributable to the skills of the athletes themselves. However, to give some numbers, given that those in duty refrain from doing so, one could venture a division of 70%-30% of the blame between the two actors, with the greatest burden falling on federal policies.
Wishing to conclude with a touch of optimism, with all the difficulties that may mean, we can recall the situation in France in 1991, when the atmosphere in the movement was similar to that breathed in Italy today. On that occasion, France went ahead in the world path in spite of predictions and expectations. Hope is necessary, the road to London is all uphill.
