Francesco Pietrosanti (born 3 December 1963 in L'Aquila) is a former Italian rugby union player and a current sports director. He played as a scrum-half.
L'Aquila is a city and comune in Central Italy, both the capital city of the Abruzzo region and of the Province of L'Aquila. As of 2013, it has a population of 70,967 inhabitants. Laid out within medieval walls on a hill in the wide valley of the Aterno river, it is surrounded by the Apennine Mountains, with the Gran Sasso d'Italia to the north-east.
Pietrosanti played his entire career at L'Aquila Rugby, at the National Championship of Excellence, from 1982/83 to 1998/99. He won the National Championship title in 1993/94.
L'Aquila Rugby 1936 was an Italian rugby union. The club was based in L'Aquila which is the capital of Abruzzo. The official colours of the club were black and green, the colours of the city of L'Aquila.
The Top12 is the highest tier of the national rugby union competition in Italy. The first Italian championship took place in 1929, contested by six of the sixteen teams that existed in Italy at that time.
He had 25 caps for Italy, from 1987 to 1993, scoring 5 tries, 20 points on aggregate. He was called for the 1991 Rugby World Cup, without playing. [1]
The Italy national rugby union team is the representative national team in the sport of rugby union for the nation of Italy. The team is known as gli Azzurri. Savoy blue is the common colour of the national teams representing Italy, as it is the traditional colour of the royal House of Savoy which reigned over the Kingdom of Italy from 1860 to 1946.
The 1991 Rugby World Cup was the second edition of the Rugby World Cup, and was jointly hosted by England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and France: at the time, the five European countries who participated in the Five Nations Championship. This was the first Rugby World Cup to be staged in the northern hemisphere, with England the hosts of the championship game. Once again, South Africa was not represented due to international sanctions imposed upon the "Springboks" by the IRB, due to the Apartheid Government policies. Following on from the success of the inaugural 1987 Rugby World Cup, the 1991 World Cup received increased attention and was seen as a major global sporting event for the first time. Also for the first time, qualifying competitions were introduced as the number of entrants had increased from 16 nations four years before to a total of 33 countries. The eight quarter-finalists from 1987 qualified automatically with the remaining eight spots contested through qualifiers by 25 countries. This however resulted in only one new side qualifying for the tournament, Western Samoa replacing Tonga. The same 16-team pool/knock-out format was used with just minor changes to the points system.
He has been team manager and sports director, since his retirement.
