The Serbian national team started preparation for its second European Shield game against Italy last week, and on Sunday Belgrade City faced Serbian Country at SC Inge stadium, with the latter winning 48-40, Country's first win since 2009. The first game, on 5 May, ended 40-26 to City, with the decider set for 15 September.

Zoran Pesic, the Country side’s captain: “This was one of those games where every mistake hurt your own side. At half time I said to my boys that all we need to do is minimize our mistakes if we want to win this game, and that’s what we did.”

Dalibor Vukanovic, Belgrade City captain: “It was a very competitive game. Unfortunately we had our chance but we didn’t capitalize on it. We were leading 40:28 until the 62nd minute but from then on there was only one team on the field.”

Country scored a staggering 28 points in the final 18 minutes in front of a no doubt intrigued national team coach, Marko Jankovic, who must name his 20-man squad on Wednesday ahead of the critical match with Italy in Belgrade.

Belgrade City: Dalibor Vukanovic, Ivan Ivanovic, Ivan Susnjara, Milan Susnjara, Mirko Bozovic Niksa Unkovic, Nikola Pavlovic, Petar Pavlovic, Stefan Nedeljkovic, Stefan Nikolic (Dorcol), Ivan Maksimovic, Lazar Nastic, Vladan Kikanovic (Novi Beograd), Dragan Vasiljevic, Milos Calic, Nebojsa Zivanovic (Red Star), Bojan Balaban, Slobodan Manak (Stari Grad)

Serbia Country: Lazar Kostic, Milos Zogovic (Car Lazar), Danilo Delic, Mihajlo Boskovic, Radovan Tajsic (Dorcol), Lazar Zivkovic, Marko Milenkovic (Nis), Milos Djurkovic, Nemanja Bozic, Pero Madzarevic, Slavisa Zekic (Radnicki), Vladica Nikolic, Vladislav Dedic, Vojislav Dedic, Zlatko Pesic, Zoran Pesic (Red Star), Dario Milosavljevic (Podbara)

Belgrad City: 7 tries (Unkovic 2, Vukanovic, Nikolic, Nedeljkovic, Ivanovic, Makismovic) and 6 from 7 goals (Vukanovic 6)
Serbia Country: 9 tries (Zoran Pesic 3, Zivkovic 3, Tajsic, Milosavljevic, Djurkovic) and 6 from 9 goals (Zogovic 3, Vojislav Dedic 3)