Italy vs Romania: Rugby World Cup live scores

Italy’s second win of the tournament condemned Romania to fourth place in the group, meaning the Oaks will have to qualify for the next tournament in 2019.

Italy and Romania will be without their inspirational captains and No.8s when they face each other at the Rugby World Cup on Sunday, with Sergio Parisse not fit and Mihai Macovei suspended.

“The choice was made with the idea of winning the match, not from the heart”, said coach Jacques Brunel.

“I won’t be celebrating”.

“Our goal was to come out of the pool”.

A lull followed as Italy looked to close out the contest with little drama but Romania wanted to end a positive tournament in style and reduced the deficit with three tries in the last 14 minutes as Apostol went over either side of a Popirlan try.

Italy: Luke McLean; Leonardo Sarto, Michele Capagnaro, Tommaso Benvenuti, Giovanbattista Venditti, Tommaso Allan, Edoardo Gori; Matias Aguero, Andrea Manici, Lorenzo Cittadini, Quintin Geldenhuys (captain), Josh Furno, Francesco Minto, Simone Favaro, Alessandro Zanni.

Romania: Catalin Fercu, Madalin Lemnaru, Paula Kinikinilau, Florin Vlaicu, Ionut Botezatu, Michael Wiringi, Valentin Calafeteanu; Daniel Carpo, Viorel Lucaci, Valentin Ursache (captain), Johannes van Heerden, Valentin Poparlan, Paulica Ion, Otar Turashvili, Mihaita Lazar.

Coach Lynn Howells has made two changes to the starting line-up.

“It is very hard to assess at the moment because I’m disappointed with the way we have finished the campaign, we deserved more than that”, he said.

Their steeliness helped them to a bigger half-time margin with Allan again showing Italy had too much pace for their counterparts, bursting through to score the third try on the stroke of the interval.

Romania showed their scrum power early on to earn the first pop at the posts and Florin Vlaicu opened the scoring from the tee.

Gori chased his own kick, bursting through the defence but fumbling over the line with the television match official confirming he had not landed the try.

Romania, coincidently, are also without their captain and No 8.

Italy were looking to bounce back after their agonising defeat to Ireland last week, while the eastern Europeans were coming into this one on a high after their remarkable comeback victory over Canada.