Sergio Parisse

When Italy’s under-19s visited Argentina more than two decades ago, they gave fifty minutes of game time to a local teenager called Sergio Parisse, who happened to have Italian parents. Fate would then set him on a path to become the greatest Italian player of his generation.

It was 1992 and, on a rugby pitch in the beautiful suburbs of La Plata, a city just over an hour east of the Argentinean capital Buenos Aires, a group of under-11s were enjoying their early taste of rugby, fusing adolescent handling with speculative passing and hopeful tackling. 

In one of the packs was a tall, leggy nine-year-old, two years younger than the rest but eager to impress. As two opponents broke through the defence, the newcomer flew into the ball-carrier. Bodies tangled, the defender fell, blood poured from the younger boy’s nose. Sergio Parisse had had his first taste of rugby, beginning a journey that would come to an end some 30 years later. 

“I guess when you are on the verge of retirement you start to reminiscence about those early years,” Sergio tells Rugby Journal days after his swansong for Toulon against Glasgow Warriors in the Challenge Cup win. “I was talking with Silvia, my wife, about my first game and those memories a few days ago; I was eight or nine, fairly big for my age so I was told to play with the kids of eleven or twelve years old, and I remember getting that stud in the top lip and nose. I sort of jumped on the carrier to tackle in a really clumsy way and got his heels in my face.

“Half of my nose seemed to be in my mouth and I was overwhelmed with the metallic taste of blood, my first proper injury, and I remember thinking, ‘well, in future if I have the ball myself then this can’t happen’.

“I guess that’s when I fell in love with rugby,” he continues. “It was also running with the ball in my hands – that’s an emotion and passion that’s never really left me. I simply love having the ball, I love playing rugby and I make no apologies for that.”

To sum up 39-year-old Sergio in numbers is completely missing the point, but nonetheless: 528 games, eighty tries and four (yes four) drop goals, including one in a Test match against Scotland in 2009, speak volumes about his sheer effectiveness. What they don’t begin to describe is the immense impact Italy’s rugby icon has had on the sport, nor the charismatic manner with which he’s spent 21 years redefining the role of a number eight forward, becoming an indisputable all-time great of rugby.

Twenty-one years: let that sink in for a moment. Sergio made his Test debut in 2002, the same year as England hooker Steve Thompson, All Black prop Tony Woodcock, and Springbok legends Bakkies Botha and Jean de Villiers – yet in longevity he has eclipsed all of them by some eight years, a quite remarkable feat.

Tucked away in the green hills of Toulon is the Parisse apartment: slick, modern but welcoming, his family sanctuary away from the rugby bustle of the magnificent French town and a place where his wife Silvia, son Leo and daughter Emily bask in the blazing sun, splashing their afternoons away in a magnificent pool overlooking the Riviera. 

Family is everything to Sergio and, although open to talking to the media about rugby, a barrier comes down to most when it comes to intruding into his personal spaces. “I don’t talk often about my private life, but I owe so much to my family, my parents, my wife and my kids,” he says. “My late father, Sergio senior, was really a key inspiration for me and it all started there, back in Buenos Aires some 40 years ago. 

“He was out in Argentina on a work assignment with Alitalia, supposedly for three months but as luck would have it, it turned out to be a lot longer.” 

Sergio senior was a fine player in his own right, a wing three-quarter in the colours of the L’Aquila club in central Italy and a driving force in their championship win in 1967. His sojourn to South America saw him meet his wife Carmela, who was already working in Buenos Aires and had moved there, also with Alitalia, when she was seventeen years old: “He met her on day one and that was that,” explains Sergio (junior). “The three-month contract ended up as many years and both my sister and I were born in La Plata, the capital of Buenos Aires province and a beautiful place with its characteristic diagonal avenues near the Rio de la Plata delta. 

“From day one, Spanish was my daily language until I came home at night.

“There we all spoke Italian,” he continues, “a reminder of my national heritage. My parents wanted me to keep that identity – we went back to Italy on vacation, we talked in our native language at home and we ate traditional Italian food at proper Italian times.

“In Argentina we were regarded as a little odd in terms of our eating habits, as the cultural norm there is siestas and food around 9.30pm. But not in our family. The Italian way is 7.30pm for dinner and that was the rule in our house! These experiences were key to me – all of my schooling was in Spanish, but when I came home I’d have further lessons in Italian – learning our history, geography and all of the cultural things.”

Cultures continually blended in Sergio’s early life. “I’d go to school around 7.30am,” he begins, “then back home at 1pm to have another hour of Italian learning, then around 5pm my English teacher would arrive. Learning both English and French at quite an early age helped me greatly in later life – my parents were both very cosmopolitan in their attitude and realised that languages are so important and I am eternally thankful for that. Maybe they were preparing me for my nomadic life in rugby, who knows? But yes, for sure, I absolutely loved learning all those different dialects. 

“It was a hectic and busy period growing up and sure there were times I’d push back and say ‘I just want to chill out with my friends’, but now I realise what a great grounding I was given. And I thank my parents for that.”

With so many conflicting attractions and with Argentina’s national obsession with football, rugby seems a leftfield choice for a youngster growing up in the land of Maradona and Messi. Sergio’s childhood friends were naturally of the football-loving persuasion, and to this day he admits to being one of Inter Milan’s biggest fans. He never passes up an opportunity to visit the majestic San Siro, dressed in the famous black and blue kit of his footballing heroes, and yet rugby became his choice, supported by his late father. “Sport was always there for me and I struggle to recall a time when I didn’t have a football, basketball or rugby ball in my hands growing up,” says Sergio. “Every day I was there with a ball – throwing it or kicking it. Sport became my life and I became addicted to it. I played tennis and also tried some taekwondo, a martial art that also helped me later with rugby in terms of tackle and balance work.

“Around the age of six I started to understand and to become hooked on rugby,” he continues. “I was playing loads of football with my friends, a sport I adore to this very day, but I was also aware of my father’s love of rugby and when I told him I wanted to play too, he supported me but also cautioned me: ‘Sergio, this is a crazy sport – it’s tough and it’s not easy either.

“He said, ‘we will ask your mum and if she’s okay we’ll go to the local club’.”

Fortunately, ultimately, for Italian rugby, Mum said yes. “He took me and I started playing at Club Universitario de La Plata which was maybe 80km from our house,” he explains. “The facilities were incredible and I thrived there – a sport-barmy kid in his element. It was a place where virtually every option existed – hockey, paddleball, volleyball among others and at least three times a week I’d get the bus after dinner to go train for a couple of hours. Sometimes I’d get there even earlier to play basketball before rugby, then maybe soccer, swimming or tennis – it was great fun but rugby was the real reason I went there.

“Rugby became my obsession,” he continues, “and I was lucky there were some great kids around to work with and have fun with. Every moment I had my ball with me – my poor sister Emanuela had to contend with endless passing and kicking with me all day long with my mother scolding me for playing ball in the house. Emanuela still has a mean spin pass off either hand and of course a deadly accurate right boot – perhaps a natural number ten?

“I cannot explain why I was so smitten with the game,” adds Sergio. “Maybe it was such a good fit for my size and skills? Maybe it was my father’s involvement with L’Aquila or indeed, his and my mum’s support? I don’t know, but what I do recognise is from those moments I became incredibly competitive about the sport – I wanted to be the best I could possibly be. I craved workload and training to squeeze my ability dry and I knew that I wanted to play professionally if I had the opportunity, wherever that happened.”

Playing so many sports, reckons Sergio, had a positive impact on his rugby career. “Looking back, the skills I developed playing all these various sports became something that really helped me greatly, offering different challenges,” he says. “The soft hands and jumping needed to play basketball, the footballing control essential at No. 8 and so on. It all adds up to make the final product and those days at Club Universitario de La Plata were so very special in making me the person and player I am today.”

Roll the clock forward a few years and a teenage Parisse was enjoying his life in La Plata when, by chance, the Italian Under-19s side visited Argentina. Knowing of young Sergio’s appetite for the game, and, rather brazenly knowing of the backrow’s dual national eligibility, they gave the big No. 8 his first break into the then embryonic years of professionalism. “While my mum’s family had moved to Argentina, my father’s relations were back in L’Aquila in Italy, so we spent long holidays – three months at a time – over there with my uncles and cousins,” explains Sergio. “L’Aquila is a rugby hotbed, so that fuelled my love of the game but also people became aware of this rugby barmy Italian kid living in Argentina. 

“I trained with the team [when on holiday] but at that moment I didn’t have the eligibility to play for the club, I was just happy getting more rugby experiences under my belt in a different environment, but one made familiar because of the club’s relationship with my dad.

“Then the Azzurri under-19s came to play two friendlies before heading to Chile for some under-19 World Cup matches,” he continues. “The manager of the side was a L’Aquila man who knew of me and told the coach, from Treviso, to get me in despite me being seventeen at the time. Initially it was for training sessions, but then I played fifty minutes in one of the friendlies and it was incredible.

“Sadly, after the match the Italian management said that they’d come with thirty players and that while they were really happy with me, they needed to stick with the guys they selected, which naturally I understood.”

But the story didn’t end there. “As luck would have it,” he begins, “one of the backrows got injured in the very last session breaking his finger hitting a tackle bag. He had to get surgery back in Italy but I got called in and played at eight in the first four games of the World Cup – South Africa, Japan, Romania were three and then I think there was a fourth against Ireland.”

After the competition, while Sergio stayed in Argentina to finish school, the Treviso connection remained and he stayed in contact. “This was maybe 2001 at this point,” says Sergio, picking up the story again. “And while professional in name, the sport was still gaining traction in Italy and wasn’t anything like it is today.”

“But the seed was planted in my mind and I managed to negotiate a contract to play there, while continuing my rugby and formal education.”

He did so, living in a compact twenty-square-metre flat. “It was hectic to fit it all in,” he admits, “training in the morning, studying sport science at Padua University in the afternoon, training again in the evening, to the point of real fatigue. 

“I have to admit there were times I was lonely, miles away from my family and having to fend for myself. But once again, my father intervened – this time over a phone call – and as usual, he told me exactly how it was. ‘Follow your dream’, was his simple message and from that moment, the rugby took over and let’s just say that perhaps the studies fell away.”

Enter John Kirwan (JK to all), the then Italian director of rugby and a man who clearly had been impressed by the talents and explosiveness of the young No. 8. At this point, Sergio had yet to make a senior appearance for Benetton Treviso, playing in their under-21 team, but Kirwan had already spotted the vast potential of the tearaway forward. “We played in the under-21 final and we won 41-21 and I recall it well as in the first fifteen minutes I was alone going down the wing with an open goal line and the ball slipped out of my hands,” says Sergio. “I got some real abuse from the stands – people telling me I was stupid, that I was showboating and so on – but I guess fortune was with me and I managed to get a couple of scores later on to shut the sledgers up.

“JK was at the game and he called me over afterwards telling me that Italy were off to New Zealand on tour, he was taking forty players and he believed I would benefit hugely from the experience,” he continues. “He told me that he was impressed that I’d recovered from the early mistake and how I’d retained focus afterwards. I was stunned, just overwhelmed. I couldn’t believe that the great John Kirwan wanted to take a naïve eighteen year old with no senior appearances on a tour to play the All Blacks.

“Incredibly, I started against Manawatu and a New Zealand XV and was then selected for my first Test – we lost 64-10 in Hamilton but given Italy had only been in the Six Nations for two seasons, it was very much early days in tier one games. I remember calling my father at some ridiculous time in the Argentinian morning to tell him I was selected for that Test and he told me, ‘No way! JK is absolutely mad!’

“And for me personally,” adds Sergio. “I wasn’t close to the physicality or intensity needed for Tests. I was about 100kgs – my Test weight is around 115kgs today – but it gave me the benchmark of where I needed to be.”

With Sergio growing into Test rugby, and adding fifteen caps in quick succession, his stock was rising on the world stage after an impressive 2003 Rugby World Cup where colourful haircuts met equally colourful rugby and Sergio scooted over for the first of his sixteen Test tries, against Canada in a 19-14 win for the Azzurri.

His performances had set tongues wagging and, in France, caught the eye of Max Guazzini, whose era of flamboyance and innovation was in full swing at Stade Francais in Paris. The media tycoon saw the poster boy of Italian rugby as the ideal signing for his star-studded team. “I’d had a decent World Cup but up until then hadn’t played in France or much at all in Europe,” recalls Sergio. “My first Six Nations match was in 2004 against the world champions England and I remember we got a fifty-point hiding with Jason Robinson scoring a hat-trick.

“At the next match against France, I met Max after the game and he made the approach, saying, ‘you’ll love Paris – you must come’. But I pulled my hamstring off the bone against Scotland and decided I needed to remain in Treviso to get the right medical care as the injury was really quite bad.

“After five or six months I made the call to go,” explains Sergio. “It was a crazy time. Max didn’t know much about rugby but he knew everything about marketing and communications. He took risks – crazy branding on incredibly unconventional jerseys! I remember playing in Perpignan and Max decided to launch the new brand there as he knew the Perp supporters were very conservative and absolutely hated all Parisians. He turned to us and said, “They all hate us here so it’s the best time to launch the fucking jersey,” which made me chuckle. So typical of Max. I was on the bench and went behind the posts to warm up only to be greeted by swearing, boos and spitting. But I guess it was Guazzini’s way of getting people talking, something at which he was brilliant.

“Things like the Moulin Rouge girls before the match, the colours, the family feel – he saw rugby as entertainment in its purest sense and changed the sport from this uber masculine environment to something more welcoming and inclusive, a real pioneer of engagement.”

Sergio’s time at Stade Francais saw them win two Top 14s, in 2007 and 2015, and a Challenge Cup in 2017, a fine yield for most clubs but, given the talent they had at their disposal, probably a marginal underachievement if one is brutally honest. In the meantime, Sergio blossomed in the blue of the Azzurri, as they consolidated and then built their status as the newbies of the Six Nations, with the core of a very good team especially in the pack. 

With the likes of Marco Bortolami, Andrea lo Cicero, Martin Castrogiovanni, the Bergamasco brothers and the superb Andrea Masi, the latter part of the first decade of the 21st century was good for Italy as they recorded some big wins, notably against both Scotland and Wales in 2007, Scotland and Argentina in 2008. That era culminated in one of Sergio’s favourite memories – a win against the mighty France in Rome, with Mirco Bergamasco nailing a 76th minute penalty to take the victory. “For sure, there were some great memories around that time, but also a lot of frustrations as well,” he says. “We had some great players in key positions, but under those guys, the back up and structure underneath was really paper thin. Replacing one of the Test-quality players if they were injured meant a huge drop off to the next available player, and that’s no disrespect to the guys that came in, it’s just how it was.

“Italy lacked the infrastructure in their domestic rugby,” continues Sergio. “We struggled for a fly-half and used many in that key position after Diego (Dominguez) retired. Scrum-half was the same – Alessandro Troncon was a massive player for the Azzurri but when he was injured or after he called it a day, we simply didn’t have the back-up coming through our system to replace him. We had a massive scrum, we were as physical as any team around but without that half-back continuity and quality we simply couldn’t compete consistently.”

That lack of depth was infamously demonstrated by, ironically, one of Italy’s most consistent performers switching from backrow to halfback. “I won’t forget Nick Mallett and Mauro Bergamasco agreeing for him to try and play nine against England in 2009,” recalls Sergio. “I told them both ‘you must be fucking crazy – Mauro, you’re a bloody backrow’. The passes went everywhere – Mauro was in tears at half-time and I think it ended when he threw a wild high pass and Mark Cueto picked it off and went under the posts.

“Today that’s changing,” he says. “Eight or nine years ago under Conor O’Shea we did a lot of work to develop the Academies and the result you’re seeing is those players coming through now – the likes of Ange Capuozzo, Paolo Garbisi and Michele Lamaro – high quality Test players in a variety of positions.

“But the wins,” he says, pausing, “they’ll stay with me forever. A special year was 2013, when we finished joint third but beat both France and Ireland – it was the excellent French coach Jacques Brunel’s first year with Italy, he really managed to get some steel into our game. We were close to beating England too – 18-13 at Twickenham – and we outscored them one try to nil, one of the most frustrating games of my life.

“Looking back at that French game it was a turning point in Italian rugby. We were not happy with the way we were being treated contractually or financially – we were being treated like amateurs but expected to train as professionals and the senior players and I told the Italian president, ‘No, give us clarity or we don’t play’. We went on strike on the Monday and it took until the Tuesday to resolve it, but the by-product of that was it brought us together as a team – a common and single-minded cause which probably helped us on the pitch.”

Highlights didn’t just happen against European opposition. “Florence in 2016 against South Africa [when they won 20-18] too – one of the greatest days in Italian rugby and I can still recall the colours and the emotions of that day vividly. I am well aware the Boks were in a form slump at the time but eleven of that side became world champions three years later and some of the Azzurri guys such as Simone Ferrari and Tommy Allan were just making their way in Tests at the time.”

What would be his final World Cup came to a premature end, not due to results, but Mother Nature. “With the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan, I was sure going into it that the time was right to go,” explains Sergio. “We had a great tournament, beating Namibia and Canada, and with the last match against the All Blacks we had a tiny mathematical chance of qualifying. But no, Typhoon Hagibis put an end to that, and to be honest, I was furious with the way we were treated by the organisers.

“If New Zealand had needed four or five points against us it would not have been cancelled and somehow things would have been done differently.  It was ridiculous that there was no plan B because it isn’t news that typhoons hit Japan – it happens regularly.

“Sure,” concedes Sergio, “everyone might think that Italy versus New Zealand being cancelled counts for nothing because we’d have lost anyway, but we deserved to be respected as a team and we still had a mathematical chance. We had the chance to play in a big stadium, against a great team in what would have been my final Test and it’s a huge regret that that didn’t happen.”.

The Sergio Parisse story almost certainly concludes at RC Toulon, the retirement home for many a global superstar of rugby, and a club he’s been with since 2019. Joining as they were in a rebuilding process, his last four years haven’t seen the last dance in the blue of Italy he so craved and deserved, (the pandemic robbed him of promised farewell in Rome against England) but in May 2023, he finally walked off the pitch to a standing ovation at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium, scoring a try (of course he did) in Toulon’s win against Glasgow Warriors. Draped in the Italian national flag, Sergio was determined to walk away from rugby remembering the emotions, sights and sounds of something that happened oh too rarely for him – being the champion his talents so richly deserved.

“The month or so lead up to the match was emotionally draining,” he admits. “Firstly, my father – my biggest supporter and my inspiration – passed away in April. Words cannot express his influence upon me. In all of my 22-year professional career he never gave me any compliments however well I played, He would say, ‘why are we talking about this pass or kick when you made so many mistakes?’. He’d point out the missed tackles here and there, or where I got turned over and I loved that – it kept me honest.

“Above all, he told me never be mediocre – he said ‘be yourself, express yourself. Don’t accept mediocrity – try to push your limits every time and try to be better every time’, was his message to me. Those are the words I remembered as I played in that final and I know he was watching. 

“Secondly, I had met with Kieran Crowley prior to the final to discuss my availability for Italy [at this year’s World Cup] should I be needed. At the moment, his feeling is he is looking for something other than I can provide, which is disappointing, but there’s nothing I can do to change that. Should he need me in two months, I will be fit and ready, but I cannot see that happening unless there’s some substantial injuries in his planning.”

Parisse’s name was not among the 46 in Italy’s World Cup training squad which Crowley selected in May and he says, “I know that my style doesn’t fit the direction he’s taking Italy, so there is no message to Kieran other than ‘I am here if you need me’.”

Remarkably Sergio will turn forty during the tournament, yet few argue he couldn’t bring something to the squad. “Regarding style, I see the position of No.8 as having one foot in the backs and one foot in the forwards – a hybrid of both units of the team,” he says. “I want to express myself, to use the skills I developed in basketball and soccer and to be true to my own emotions, that’s why I’ve been prepared to innovate with boot on ball and with my passing. It is the way I respond to my father’s message, by never being mediocre, even within that team structure.”

With or without a swan song at the World Cup, he’s got his post-rugby life mapped out. “Life here in Toulon is wonderful,” he explains. “I have finished my coaching licences and in the short term I’ll be focusing on coaching within RCT and developing the academy we have here. I’ll also be working during the World Cup with ITV in London as I try to become a pundit for the first time – that’ll be fun but don’t think for one moment I won’t be wishing I was there on the pitch.

“The change to my life will be significant,” he concedes. “For 34 years I have had routines – packing my kitbag in the same way, the taping up before a game, the recovery after – those are the mundanities of my career I will miss and I know at the start that it will be painful not to have those touchpoints of my normality.

“But the focus now is on my family, my kids, the love of my life, my wife Silvia. It’s their time now, and I have the chance to share the crucial formative years of both Leo and Emily with much less distraction. 

“The challenges will be new, the times will change, but I cannot thank the sport of rugby enough for the opportunities, emotions and gifts it has given to me. 

“It’s been an absolute blast.”

Story by James While

Pictures by  Getty Images

This extract was taken from issue 22 of Rugby.
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