England hit back to deny Italy at Olimpico

England overcame a half-time deficit to hit back and deny Italy a historic victory at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome yesterday in a pulsating 19-15 Six Nations win.

Italy pounced on two England errors to score tries through Tommaso Benvenuti and Giovambattista Venditti, in only his second appearance, to turn around at the break 12-6 in front.

But a charge-down try from Charlie Hodgson and five out of five successful kicks from Owen Farrell gave the reigning Six Nations champions a hard-fought victory.

“We kept plugging away and upped the tempo in the second half. We didn’t lose our heads and it obviously came good in the end,” said Hodgson.

“We were 15-6 down, to come back and be successful in a place like this against Italy with all their experience shows what (spirit) we have, we’re obviously delighted to get the win.

“We’ve worked hard over the last couple of weeks, with these two victories (after beating Scotland in the first Six Nations weekend). A week off next week and we look forward to the Wales game and see what happens then.”

Italy captain Sergio Parisse could not hide his disappointment after the game, but admitted that they had been a touch fortunate to lead at half-time.

“Obviously we’ve missed a great opportunity but you have to look at the game as a whole,” he said.

“The first half was not exceptional. Maybe in the first 10 minutes we did something that we had been working on and got the ball behind them.

“We scored a try and then Benvenuti did well to go for the ball and score a try, but it wasn’t a great half, it was just the points that looked good.”

The game kicked off with a bizarre looking pitch as stewards had cleared one half of the ground of snow but not the other.

Results: Italy vs England 15-19; France vs Ireland pp.

Playing today (16.00): Wales vs Scotland.