The Parma Zebre team that comes to South Africa for a two-week Vodacom United Rugby Championship tour has become used to being at the foot of the log in all the various incarnations of a competition that started off as the Celtic League.
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One of two Italian teams in the URC, the other being Rainbow Cup champions Benetton, Zebre pushed Ospreys close last week before going down by five points in Swansea.
That’s as close as Zebre have come to winning this season, and as you have to go back over a year to any win scored by them, it isn’t surprising they have already parted ways with the coach who was in charge at the start of the current campaign.
Former Ireland scrumhalf Michael Bradley, who had been head coach at Connacht for four years and at Edinburgh for two before taking up the Zebre post, was in charge from 2017 but was relieved of his position in early January.
He has been replaced as coach by experienced Argentinian Emiliano Bergaschi, a former prop and the forwards coach under Bradley’s coaching, with former Italy wing Fabio Roselli serving as his assistant.
Zebre have had a stop start season because of various issues, not least of them Covid-19 inspired postponements, and have currently played only eight games.
And they haven’t been in action often since Bradley was sacked, so it is hard to say whether there has been any improvement under Bergaschi.
While the closeness of the score in Swansea was encouraging, the game against Ospreys produced poor quality rugby and the hosts seldom engaged anything close to top gear.
Like Zebre, the Ospreys were missing players who were away on Six Nations duty, but having players away is more problematic for Zebre than it is for Benetton because of the two Italian teams, the one based in Parma has more of a focus on home grown talent.
While Benetton have a legion of foreigners, including several South Africans such as Dewald Duvenage, Zebre have only a few.
It has always been thus with Zebre, with just three of the 36-man squad that represented Zebre in their inaugural season of 2012/2013 being ineligible to play for Italy.
There has always been a very strong youth policy, with a heavy accent on developing under-21 players, and a significant portion of that initial squad was made up of members of the Italian rugby academy, F.I.R. Academy Ivan Francescato.
Zebre are based in Parma in the province of Emilia-Romagna, which has Bologna as its capital city, and the club was formed to represent the north-west part of Italy, and are often referred to as “the XV of the North-West”.
It represents the four committees of Emilia-Romagna, Liguria, Lombardy and Piedmont, which includes several clubs and has a membership that extends to several tens of thousands.
Since 2018 Zebre, who replaced Arioni in the PRO12, which was expanded from the Celtic League to include Italian teams in 2010, also represents teams from other Italian rugby committees such as Abruzzo, Lazio, Marche, Tuscany and Sicily.
The team was officially named as Zebre Parma, to recognise its home base, at the start of the current season.
Initially they were just known as Zebre, a name that was sourced in it being used by an invitational selection team founded in 1973 by former Italian national captain Marco Bollesan.
The Zebre team of that era played regular friendly fixtures against touring overseas clubs, and in the period from 1973 to 1997 Zebre, which translates as Zebra in English, scored a number of notable victories.
Sunday’s game against the Stormers at Danie Craven Stadium in Stellenbosch, which will be followed by a clash with the Sharks in Durban the following Saturday, will be the Zebres’ historic first appearance on South African soil.
They have played two South African teams though so far in this year’s competition, with the Lions beating them in the opening game and the Bulls following up with a comprehensive victory in Parma two weeks ago.
