team. “Our motto was that this would be more beautiful
than before. They set fire to our home? We must react.”
Today the Giuseppe Cunsolo clubhouse is padlocked,
its insides charred black. But beside it, overlooking the
San Teodoro field, sit two giant hangars connected by
a corridor. One is filled with gym equipment. The other
has been transformed into a combination café, library,
school and youth club. Murals celebrate that library’s
namesake, Iqbal Masih, a Pakistani labor rights activist,and a commitment to environmentalism. On one wall
is painted love rugby / hate racism.
The field itself is perched on a slope looking down
on the Sicilian coastline. Planes take off and land to
one side; the other is surrounded by project blocks. On
clear days you can see Etna, which still blows regularly,
between crumbling rooftops. Only on rare nights is the
club empty. More than one player describes Briganti as
their “happy place.”I
N 2 0 19, BRIGANTI embarked on an ambitious project
to replace its patchy grass field with artificial turf.
Goals were set of marrying the club’s social mission with
on-field success. But the COVID-19 pandemic slowed
work—authorities ultimately banned amateur contact
sports for more than a year—and contractors failed to
deliver on labor and materials. Club members, rattled by
past incidents, feared the mob was pressuring suppliers
to sabotage the project.
Last April, somebody kicked down the reimaginedclubhouse’s iron door and stole equipment. Not long after
that came the attack on the bus (the burned remains of
which still sit beside the field) and the bullet holes in the
gymnasium wall. “The Mafia showed us in an explicit
way that they don’t like us,” says Mancuso. “Working
in this neighborhood, this is one of the things you can
expect. It’s part of being here. But every time we were
hit by an attack, it encouraged us to do more.
“We are not saviors,” he says of himself and his fellow
coaches. “We just do this to help the [players]. Just because
you’re born [in Librino] doesn’t mean the end. You can
have choices. Rugby opens the window on that journey.”
During the pandemic, Mancuso decided he would let
a younger generation lead Briganti. Mirko Saraceno,
who has been with Briganti since he was 13, was named
the club’s president in July 2020. He’s 24, with a stern,
bespectacled face and legs that fire like pistons. “The
mission is to communicate with these guys through
rugby,” he says. “I always tell them: Perhaps you will not
become the champions of the world. But you will grow
up; you’ll fall down and get back up.
“Especially in this neighborhood,” he adds, “the chal-
lenge is letting them know they can do it.”
Saraceno and his brigands remain vigilant. They
put in regular night shifts to guard the San Teodoro,
patrolling its perimeter every 15 minutes. A couple of
months ago, he and his partner, Mazzucchelli, were in
the clubhouse during one such shift when they heard
a loud knocking. At the door they found 10 guys who
claimed to be looking for a friend. The next morning
they discovered that a large chunk of turf had been
rolled up, ready to steal.
“We think they were trying to see if there was really
someone inside, or if they could act undisturbed,” says
Mazzucchelli. “Obviously, that scared us.” Otherwise, she
says, Briganti staff and players have remained unfazed
by the constant criminal threats.
Alessio Panebianco has lost dozens of acquaintances
to drugs and crime over the years. In 2020, Mafiosi
murdered one of his friend’s brothers and hid the body.
But from a longer view, things are looking up. For start-
ers, there are fewer drugs on the street. Panebianco,
for his part, gets to coach kids almost every day, and
in February his club christened its new, artificial-turf
pitch. His dream of playing top-level professional rugby
may be ebbing away, but he has goals of pursuing an
economics degree. Looking forward, he hopes that, as
Briganti matures, the Mafia will accept the rugby club
as a part of Catania’s city culture.
Panebianco still hurts from December’s playoff loss.
That negative, however, is nothing compared with the
positives of life away from the mob. “Of course my par-
ents played a part,” he says of his upbringing, “but 80%
of what I am today is Briganti. Sometimes I wonder how
my life would have been without it, and I imagine it very
dark, without light.
“Briganti is the light.”SPORTS
ILLUSTRATED
SI.COM
MAY 2022
79PIERO PRESSURE
With the U-17 boys team ( left) as well as
everyone else, Mancuso pushes the core of
rugby: “It’s not enough to have very good
players. You also have to work together.”