The fourth to last round of the regular season of the United Rugby Championship is being played this weekend and the Parma Zebre host the Glasgow Warriors at the Lanfranchi, in a real spin. For Fabio Roselli’s boys, the desire to return to victory after a long time, stopping the run of the Scots, currently second in the standings.
To try to overturn the predictions for Zebre Parma, defense will be fundamental. In fact, during the season, the Emilians missed 23.3 tackles per game, the worst record of the tournament, while on average their opponents only missed 16.4 tackles. And in front of him he has a team that brings home more clean breaks than anyone else, 8.8 per game, while in attack the Zebre only get 4.4.
Not only that, because when Glasgow won the average clean breaks were 10.2, conceding only 3.7. How can we understand, therefore, the first step is to defend as best as possible when the Scots have ball in hand and limit their runs as much as possible, thus giving them as few opportunities as possible to reach the goal. And for this match Fabio Rosselli makes several changes in the starting XV and on the bench.
Rest shift for Gonzalo Garcia, Simone Gesi, Giovanni Licata, Andrea Zambonin and Davide Ruggeri, particularly employed during the year and in the last game weekends. Muhamed Hasa returns to the right in the front line, Gregory moves to the wing, Enrico Lucchin and Franco Smith Jr start in the centres, Thomas Dominguez from the first minute in midfield with captain Prisciantelli. Also back in the lineup are Ferrari, De Leeuw, Fox-Matamua, Sisi and Manfredi, the latter about to cross the finish line of five appearances in the zebra jersey. Also called up are academy prop Samuele Taddei, who will be on the field on March 1st in Cork against Munster, and scrumhalf Ratko Jelic, ready to take over during the match in his first appearance of the season.
