Sunday 20 March 2016 13:27, UK
Italy captain Sergio Parisse hopes the arrival of a new coaching staff will help the Azzurri rebound from a dreadful Six Nations campaign.
Jacques Brunel's time in charge of the team came to an end on Saturday when Italy fell to a record 67-14 defeat at the hands of Wales in Cardiff.
Brunel is joining Top 14 side Bordeaux-Begles as forwards coach and his replacement is widely expected to be Harlequins director of rugby Conor O'Shea.
But whoever takes over from the Frenchman faces a big rebuilding job, with Italy's previous positive results against the top European sides coming to a juddering halt as they suffered five defeats, conceding 224 points and 29 tries.
"There are no excuses," Parisse said. "We are going to take the opportunity to work, and from June we are going to have different staff and maybe things will change.
"It is difficult to play matches when you lose by 50 or 60 points. Sometimes we try to do good things - we scored two good tries (against Wales) - but there were too many mistakes in defence and Wales played with a lot of speed.
"They scored two tries from first phase, and at this level that is not acceptable. It was a really good performance from Wales, but at the same time it was a really poor performance from us.
"We had a lot of injuries, a lot of players with problems, and especially for the young guys, we have to keep working, learn from this defeat and build something for the future.
"This campaign has been very difficult, but every single nation and every single team sometimes gets a lot of injuries. Maybe for us it is difficult because we don't have as much depth in our group."
