Italy coach John Kirwan admitted his team deserved their mauling at the hands of Wales, then tipped the Welsh as Six Nations title contenders. "The only positive I can take is that we can't play that badly again, we fully deserved to get beat," he said.
"We didn't play that well in the first half, but we were still in the match.
"But I saw a very good Welsh team - everybody is saying Ireland are favourites, but I think Wales are in with a very good chance."
Italy stayed in touch to trail 19-5 at the break, thanks to Italy fly-half Luciano Orquero charging down Gavin Henson's attempted chip and gathering the loose ball to score.
 |  This could have been a bit of a banana skin |
But Wales turned on the style in the second half as their slick handling cut the Azzurri defence to ribbons.
"In the second half we committed too many errors and we got punished," Kirwan, a former All Black wing, conceded.
"When we play to the best of our ability we can be competitive, when we're ordinary like today we're very ordinary."
MMIX
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