Brunel’s maiden campaign finished on a high with a gritty if uninspiring 13-6 defeat of Scotland in Rome to ensure they avoided the Wooden Spoon for the first time in five years.

Before, however, that match Italy had lost four straight games and were comprehensively dismantled 42-10 in Dublin by Ireland.

But Brunel pointed how the new talents of Giovanbattista Venditti and Tommaso Benvenuti have been successfully bedded into the set-up and argues the evolution of the team can continue to extent they are challenging for silverware in the not too distant future.

Brunel said: "It's difficult but I truly believe that we have the capacity to win this tournament in three or four years' time.

"The international level is very high. From here until the next Six Nations, we have six games and we have to progress a lot to achieve the level that we want to be at.

"In this year's edition, we have seen six or seven new players with respect to the old guard and I believe that during the summer, this group will keep on growing."

Although Scotland were there were their only victims in the RBS 6 Nations, Italy showed enough in patches to convince they could claim more scalps in the future.
Against England two quick-fire tries gave them a 12-6 halftime lead while they also impressed in the first half of their matches against France and Wales.

And Brunel admits the challenge is to find a level of consistency in both their attack and defence over 80 minutes.

"There have been games where our attack has done well and our defence has not and vice versa as was the case against Wales,” he added.

 "We played a great opening half against Ireland but we weren't able to keep it going in the second half.

"Against France we tried to impose our play."