Oxford University opened their pre-season tour to Italy with an 18-18 draw against a strong Silea team.

The normally beautiful north Italian weather gave way to a huge thunderstorm, which made conditions much more favourable to the heavier Italian team, who contented themselves with playing the ball through the forwards.

Oxford opened the scoring through debutant winger Will Ellerby, who ran strongly past four defenders to score in the corner.

Seb FitzGerald missed the conversion, but did secure a penalty to give Oxford an 8-0 lead.

Hooker Peter Nicholas was sin-binned in the 30th minute and this allowed the Italians to score a push-over try.

Five minutes later, the Italians secured a five-metre scrum and again drove the Oxford seven over the line to score a converted try and take a 12-11 lead.

The return of Nicholas refocused Oxford's concentration, and a series of drives through the forwards allowed scrum half Dan Taberner to snipe over for a try which was superbly converted by Soshi Fuchigami.

Oxford held out well under renewed pressure but a sortie of strange penalty decisions allowed Silea to draw level.

This was a much improved performance by the Dark Blues on their 24-19 practice match defeat at Henley last week. There were strong individual performances from prop Kevin Tkachuk and centre Toby Robinson.