Short of borrowing Captain Corelli’s Mandolin and strumming his way through a few chords of O Sole Mio, Conor O’Shea could hardly have done more to serenade Alex Lozowski into joining Italy.
By making an early move for the English fly half-cum-centre, O’Shea proved to be years ahead of the pack.
The Irishman sprang into action shortly after his appointment as the Azzurri’s head coach in 2016 which coincided with Lozowski’s transfer from Wasps to Saracens.
The player, eligible for Italy through his grandmother’s nationality, never had any doubts as to his identity and his goal, to wear the Re...