away from criminal activity. And that outlet, it seems, has
not gone over particularly well with Sicily’s feared Maf ia,
the Cosa Nostra. Because the club offers an alternative
to mob life, “they hate Briganti,” says Simone Olivelli, a
crime reporter with Italy’s MeridioNews.
Briganti’s staff has been threatened and has seen
equipment stolen. Last May assailants sneaked around the
back of Briganti’s half-finished San Teodoro Stadium and
torched the team bus. Soon afterward, somebody fired
two bullets into the wall of Briganti’s gym. Players from
74 the senior men’s and women’s teams were now putting
This was on a sunny afternoon in December at the
Stadio Giuseppe Rizzo in Catania, Sicily, at the foot of
Mount Etna. Panebianco’s team, Briganti di Librino,
was in its first-ever playoff, against San Gregorio, and
the winner would climb to the third tier of Italy’s rugby
pyramid, Serie B.
Victory, though, would mean more than just deliverance
to a higher division—it would be salvation from a year
when Briganti came under siege from sinister outside
forces. The club fields boys and girls teams at almost
every age level, providing those players with a crucial pathFifteen minutes into
the biggest game of his
life, Alessio Panebianco
saw the looks in his
teammates’ eyes and
realized: We’re gonna lose.