Italia Touch looking forward to welcoming teams to Calvisano

With just under seven weeks to go until the first tap off, Chris joined Italia Touch President and Event Director, Andrea Corcetto and fellow organiser Nicolo Colombo for a venue tour and to run through final plans for the tournament in August. Planning is going well as Chris found out first hand

“Andrea, Nicolo and the rest of the team are doing a great job. The venue is perfect for an event of this scale, with an impressive main stadium, three outer fields and most of the infrastructure on site permanently. I managed to witness the venue in production mode for the Under 20s Rugby World Championships taking place at the moment – and it seems to be working well,” said Chris.

This will be the team from Italia Touch’s first foray into international event organisation. Whilst Italia Touch organised the European Championships in Treviso in 2012, Andrea and Nicolo were not involved in organising back then, although they do have experience from running a lot of domestic touch at the venue:

“We would like to thank FIT for entrusting us to organise the first European Opens Cup and we are excited about welcoming teams from across Europe and further afield to Italy this summer. I am really happy with how planning is going, and it was great to be able to show Chris the work that we are doing and to see the Calvisano venue. We hope we will be able to put on a great event and provide those visiting with a memorable experience of their time in Italy,” said Andrea.

The European Opens Cup will feature 22 teams split across men’s, women’s and mixed competition. Teams will play a minimum of seven games, with most teams playing nine games across the three days. All three categories will feature a round robin against all other teams, before a knockout round of at least two matches each. The draft format for the competition will be sent to NTO’s this week, with the final fixtures expected to be announced by the end of the month.

We'll be back in contact with more event updates and news very soon.