During the dark days of the 2007 Six Nations - well they were if you were Welsh - it looked as if the Italian team were well on their way to the holy grail for northern hemisphere rugby teams, namely beating England.
So it's disappointing that despite a valiant effort, and given England's near cabon copy of their capitulation at the Millennium Stadium the previous week, the Azzurri simply ran out of time.
Funnily enough a few weeks back whilst reading the usual extravagant claims in the Welsh press about our national team's chances in this year's competition I noticed something that took me by surprise.
Apparently "forms of football involving hands and feet..." - that'd be rugby then - "were played in Italy from Roman times to the medieval era".
Digging a bit deeper I found that according to some historians it was likely the Romans may have introduced the game, which they called Harpastum, to Britain nearly 2000 years ago.
The Romans themselves apparently borrowed much of the game from Greece where it was variously called Phaininda (meaning to pretend) or Episkyros.
Who knew?
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