Italy and the Utrecht Shield
The record books • Utrecht Shield
Italy have only ever been Lineal World Champions once. Here's the mad week it happened.
Five weeks. Four different Lineal World Champions. One tournament nobody talks about enough. The 2015 Women's Six Nations was absolute chaos, and Italy were right in the middle of it.
England vs Italy is coming up in this year's Women's Six Nations and on paper it looks comfortable for England. They are on a 17-match Utrecht Shield run, one of the longest in the title's history, and they have never lost the shield to Italy across nine meetings.
But the Utrecht Shield does not care about form guides or world rankings. It cares about one game, one result, one moment in time. And Italy know that better than anyone, because they have been Lineal World Champions of women's rugby. Once. For exactly two matches. The way it happened is one of the best stories in the shield's history.
Go back to the 2015 Women's Six Nations.
The tournament where nobody could hold onto it
England arrived at that Six Nations as Utrecht Shield holders. They had carried it through the entire 2014 World Cup in France, going nine matches unbeaten. Wales came to Swansea on 8th February 2015 and beat them 13-0. Wales were Lineal World Champions.
Wales defended it against Scotland the following week, 39-3. Looking solid. Then France came to Montauban on 27th February and won 28-7. France were Lineal World Champions now. The shield had already changed hands twice inside three weeks of the same tournament.
This is where it gets properly brilliant.
The day Italy became world champions
14th March 2015. Nuovi Impianti Sportivi Comunali, Badia Polesine, a small town in northern Italy not far from Padova. Italy vs France, round four of the Women's Six Nations. France came in as Lineal World Champions. Italy beat them 17-12.
Italy were Lineal World Champions of women's rugby. It had never happened before. It has never happened since.
They backed it up the following week, beating Wales 23-5 in Padova to make it two matches as champions. For a fortnight in March 2015, the Utrecht Shield sat in Italian hands. In the entire 43 years of the title's history, that remains the only time.
In the entire 43 years of the Utrecht Shield's history, Italy have held it once. A fortnight in March 2015. Seventeen points to twelve against France. That was their moment.
The 2016 Six Nations came around, France travelled to Bourg-en-Bresse and won 39-0. The shield was gone.
You get your moment. You take it or you don't. Italy took theirs.
What does this mean going into England vs Italy?
England's current run stands at 17 matches, the joint second longest in the shield's history. Italy have never taken the shield off England across nine previous meetings. England beat Italy 38-5 in round one of this year's Six Nations as part of the current run.
On paper, nothing about this fixture threatens England. Nobody in Badia Polesine in March 2015 expected Italy to beat France that afternoon either. Every single time the Utrecht Shield is on the line, a thread of history is being written. Sometimes the result nobody expected is the one that gets written down.
Italy have tasted it once. They know what it feels like. Somewhere in that squad, someone has been thinking about it.
The Utrecht Shield has been contested 215 times since that first match in Utrecht in 1982. If Italy's moment got you, you can own a piece of the physical shield, cut from the same tree and same slab, with a certificate tracing the full lineage back to the very beginning. And if you want to be part of it permanently, your name can be engraved on the back of the shield itself.