Ryanair flight FR1702 from East Midlands hit the runway at Bergamo Airport on Friday afternoon with a thump so violent it knocked the book I was reading out of my hands and on to the floor.

Sixty seconds later, as the terrified faces of fellow passengers had been replaced with nervous laughter, the chief air hostess announced over the PA system: “As you may have just noticed, we have landed at Bergamo Airport.”

It was sheer comedy.

I was less amused 24 hours later, driving around the agricultural belt of Italy trying to find the Stadio Zaffanella.

Viadana is the proverbial needle in a haystack. A 40-minute drive from my base in Parma, which was, in turn, 110 miles from the bumpy landing.

There is just nothing there. A few petrol stations and one main street with a few roads branching off it.

I can also confirm there is a Third Division football team there. I visited their ground several times by mistake as kick-off crept closer, in the vain hope that the football posts might metamorphosise into rugby ones.

Having felt like I was turning into my mum after an hour of driving around aimlessly hoping to find a venue (not helped by the address in the Heineken Cup handbook being the wrong one), I eventually stumbled across a lovely little compact ground.

Viadana is a friendly club with nice people and knowledgeable fans.

They also have the most exuberant cheerleader in the history of rugby. He literally screamed out the start of chants over the PA, which the home crowd would then join in and follow.

One of the funniest things of the day was hearing the sizeable Tigers contingent in the seats going: “shhhhhhhhhhh” to try and shut him up as Billy Twelvetrees lined up a second-half kick.

The Italians respecting the kicker with silence has about as much chance of catching on as a screaming PA announcer at Welford Road.

After a bit of a wobble, Tigers came through with a 46-11 win, five points and job done.

On the way back, I passed through a place called ‘Sorbolo’ – the ideal home for Dan Hipkiss at the minute as he recovers from a virus which Richard Cockerill said recently had had an alarming effect on his nether regions.

There were a few Tigers fans out in the centre of Parma celebrating. Most of them in an Irish bar. Talk about when in Rome . . .

Another bar in town was very Italian though. The women were dressed up as if they were going to the opera, while the men were clad in white vests and hats and wore sunglasses inside the bar . . . at night.

They also ordered white wine and Prosecco like it was going out of fashion. Coalville Working Men’s Club this was not.

Before making the trek back to Bergamo Airport on Sunday, I grabbed the morning sports paper to see what they made of Viadana’s biggest-ever crowd of 4,320.

The Gazzetta Dello Sport is 48 pages long and covers anything from basketball to cycling. Rugby is a mere token gesture however. Tigers’ win earned two paragraphs.

To put that in context, a story about a Second Division footballer getting married earned a picture and eight pars.