MIDDLE MANAGEMENT

After missing the World Cup, Italy centre Tommaso Menoncello is relishing being at the heart of the action once again

- MARK PALMER

ITALY CENTRE Tommaso Menoncello has been doing a spot of modelling, stalking the catwalk for Italian brand DSquared2 alongside his Azzurri team-mates Alessandro Garbisi, Manuel Zuliani and Lorenzo Pani, plus his Benetton colleagues Leonardo Marin and Matthias Douglas.

“Don’t worry, it’s not a second career, just a little bit of fun outside rugby,” Menoncello says with a smile. “I quite enjoyed it, I must admit, and I’m hoping I’ll get a bit of stash out of it eventually! The boys have been taking the piss out of me in the dressing room, but I got it a bit less than some others, I must say.”

Underwear shoots are one thing but the stage where the 21-year-old has been desperate to be back strutting his stuff is the Test arena, a place where he has seemed utterly at home since a Paris debut against France in the first match of the 2022 Six Nations.

Sixteen minutes in, Menoncello touched down to leapfrog Stuart Hogg, George North and Gaël Fickou as the youngest try-scorer in Six Nations history, at 19 years and 170 days.

Everything was going to plan until last August when, shortly after he scored in a World Cup warm-up in Ireland, the Treviso native suffered a nasty-looking bicep tear and shoulder injury.

“As soon as it happened I knew it was something serious and I would miss the World Cup,” he says. “I recognised that straightaway. When I got back to the changing room, I really let rip. I was properly angry, upset and disappointed.

“But with the passage of time, when I got back to my club and started working, got back in the gym, I managed to distract myself and get back to thinking about the future. Little by little, I saw the slight improvements.