Eight changes for Zebre to face Glasgow Warriors
Parma (Italy), October 4, 2018 – Zebre Rugby Club left Parma this morning for the only trip of the season to Scotland to face Glasgow Warriors. Tomorrow night’s game at the Scotstoun Stadium will be the thirteenth encounter between the two teams. Zebre have never managed to overtake the Scotsmen, champions of the Guinness PRO14 in 2014-15 and unbeaten since May 2017 at home in the competition. The Italian franchise come into the game after defeat last Saturday against the Ospreys and occupy sixth place in the table standings with 10 points while the Warriors beat the Dragons at home and lead the the group with 20 points resulting from 4 wins and only one defeat.
For the first challenge of the season between the two teams, Zebre coaching staff led by Michael Bradley has made eight changes to the starting XV by mixing the cards with respect to the last week’s game. There is a debut for the Fijian winger Balekana, while the two props Ah-Nau and Bello will make their seasonal debut.
There will be a new second row with captain Biagi along with Krumov. Compared to last Saturday’s game, tomorrow evening there will be new faces in the new halves with Violi and the South African Brummer, who will start for the first time at the fly-half position. The last change concerns Bisegni who will play at outside centre.
On the bench there are first seasonal call for the two halves Azzolini and Raffaele, in search of their first game of the season like lock Ortis.
Here’s Zebre Rugby Club line-up for Friday, October 5 match at the Scotstoun Stadium in Glasgow (Scotland) for the 6th round of the Guinness PRO14 against the Scottish side of the Glasgow Warriors. Kick-off at 7.35 pm local time:
15 Edoardo Padovani*
14 Gabriele Di Giulio*
13 Giulio Bisegni
12 Tommaso Boni*
11 Paula Balekana
10 Francois Brummer
9 Marcello Violi*
8 Jimmy Tuivaiti
7 Johan Meyer
6 Apisai Tauyavuca
5 George Biagi (cap)
4 Leonard Krumov*
3 Eduardo Bello
2 Oliviero Fabiani
1 Cruze Ah-Nau
Replacements:
16 Massimo Ceciliani*
17 Daniele Rimpelli*
18 Roberto Tenga
19 Samuele Ortis*
20 Giosué Zilocchi*
21 Riccardo Raffaele*
22 Maicol Azzolini*
23 Giovanbattista Venditti*
Head Coach: Michael Bradley
Not available for selection due to injury: Nicolas De Battista, Renato Giammarioli*, Giovanni Licata*, Maxime Mbandà*, Matteo Minozzi*
*Former member of the Italian Rugby Union academy “Ivan Francescato” of Parma
Referee: Quinton Immelman (South African Rugby Union)
Assistant Referees: Lloyd Linton e Hollie Davidson (Scottish Rugby Union)
TMO: Charles Samson (Scottish Rugby Union)
Live coverage of the game in Italy on live streaming on DAZN on www.dazn.com. Live text coverage of the game on www.pro14rugby.organd on Zebre Rugby twitter account with the official game hashtag #GLAvZEB.
