Published by
Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
By Sean Williams In a struggling Sicilian neighborhood racked by crime and poverty, one team is offering hope. And learning the cost of crossing the mob. Fifteen minutes into the biggest game of his life, Alessio Panebianco saw the looks in his teammates’ eyes and realized: We’re gonna lose. This was on a sunny afternoon in December at the Stadio Giuseppe Rizzo in Catania, Sicily, at the foot of Mount Etna. Panebianco’s team, Briganti di Librino, was in its first-ever playoff, against San Gregorio, and the winner would climb to the third tier of Italy’s rugby pyramid, Serie B. Victory, though,…