Matteo Minozzi scored a hat-trick to inspire Italy to a  85-15 win over Russia on Saturday.

The Azzurri were ruthless in their annihilation of Russia, scoring 13 tries in their final home appearance before the Rugby World Cup.

After an industrious first-half shift from their back row, Italy held a commanding 38-8 lead at the break with captain Sergio Parisse among the try-scorers.

It was more of the same in the second half as Tommy Allan, who kicked six conversions, went over within a minute of the restart to score. Other notable performances came from Mattia Bellini and Edoardo Padovani, who both claimed a couple of tries.

Italy still have warm-up fixtures scheduled against France and England before heading to the World Cup, where they will face Namibia, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand in Pool B.

Russia, ranked 20th in the world, will take on Japan, Samoa, Scotland and Ireland in Pool A.

Italy – 15 Jayden Hayward, 14 Mattia Bellini, 13 Michele Campagnaro, 12 Luca Morisi, 11 Matteo Minozzi, 10 Tommaso Allan, 9 Tito Tebaldi, 8 Sergio Parisse (c), 7 Jake Polledri, 6 Abraham Steyn, 5 Federico Ruzza, 4 David Sisi, 3 Tiziano Pasquali, 2 Luca Bigi, 1 Andrea Lovotti.
Subs: 16 Federico Zani, 17 Simone Ferrari, 18 Marco Riccioni, 19 Alessandro Zanni, 20 Sebastian Negri, 21 Callum Braley, 22 Carlo Canna, 23 Edoardo Padovani.

Russia – 15 Vasily Artemyev, 14 German Davydov, 13 Vladimir Ostrouhsko, 12 Dmitry Gerasimov, 11 Kirill Golosnitsky, 10 Ramil Gaisin, 9 Dmitry Perov, 8 Viktor Gresev, 7 Tagir Gadzhiev, 6 Nikita Vavilin, 5 Andrei Ostrikov, 4 Andrei Garbuzov, 3 Kirill Gotovtsev, 2 Stanislav Selsky, 1 Valery Morozov.
Subs: 16 Evgeny Matveev, 17 Andrei Polivalov, 18 Vladimir Podrezov,19 Bogdan Fedotko, 20 Vitaly Zhivatov, 21 Vasily Dorofeev, 22 Yuri Kushnarev, 23 Vladislav Sozonov.

Photo: Gallo Images