Portugal

The first time Portugal qualified for a Rugby World Cup in 2007, the campaign had included 83-0 defeats, having guns pulled on them in Uruguay, and then getting drawn against the All Blacks at the main event. This time around, for France 2023, they did it the hard way.

Four Rugby World Cup defeats in four Rugby World Cup games. Thirty-eight points in the ‘for’ column, and 209 against. They finished bottom of the group with a solitary point, earnt from narrowly losing 10-14 to Romania. It wasn’t surprising that when Portugal returned home from the 2007 Rugby World Cup in France, they expected the impact to be minimal. 

Team Manager Francisco ‘Xico’ Martins was used to seeing people going about their daily business on the Avenue Estados Unidos da America, where he lived in Lisbon. And often, either side of the busy, two-lane urban highway, lined with offices and apartments, there would be children playing in the small gardens, an oasis of green amid the glass-fronted buildings and concrete, pretending to be the next Luis Figo.

It is a long road, cutting through the outskirts of the capital from east to west, and unremarkable in every respect other than for the fact that, in the immediate aftermath of Portugal’s appearance in France, Xico saw a sight he never thought he would witness – the same youngsters throwing a rugby ball around.

On paper, that first appearance at rugby’s top table for the Wolves – or Os Lobos, as the national side are known – might not look good, but their amateur status meant they earnt fans the world over, not least for having the audacity to score a try against the All Blacks, part of a thirteen-point haul (even in a 108-13 reverse).

Xico, now a vice-president with Federação Portuguesa de Rugby, with responsibility for the country’s men’s national teams, recalls how in those six short weeks of being away in France, everything changed. “We had no idea of the impact that we had in Portugal until we got home,” he says. “Everyone recognised us, which was totally new. For an amateur and very small sport, it was special.

“There was a coffee shop on my street that I went in to, I had been living there since 1992, and no one had ever talked about rugby to me before [in fifteen years], but now the guy there, he started to speak to me about it.”

Portugal’s respect had been hard-earned, it had taken them eight matches – over a gruelling five-month period from October 2006 to the following March – just to get to France in 2007, all at their own time and expense.

Qualification began with an 83-0 hiding by Italy and performances in the next set of fixtures were anything but convincing. A narrow win over Russia saw them live to fight another day but a defeat and a draw to Georgia ensured it was the Lelos who took the more direct route to France.

Even African minnows Morocco proved stubborn opponents in the next round of qualifying, Os Lobos only winning by an aggregate of six points across the two fixtures, to set up a two-legged play-off with Uruguay for the 20th and final ticket to Rugby World Cup 2007.

A 12-5 first-leg victory in Lisbon two weeks earlier meant the 18-12 reverse at the Estadio Parque Central de Club Nacional was just enough for them to qualify and take their place in Group C alongside the favourites New Zealand, and Scotland, Italy and Romania.

After such a long build-up, to qualify by one point led to an emotional outpouring – and a night in a Montevideo jail for six of the team. “After the game, we celebrated on the pitch and then we went back to the hotel and then out for dinner,” explains Luis Pissarra, then the team’s scrum-half and now assistant to head coach Patrice Lagisquet. “We needed to leave Montevideo quite early. I think we had to be at the airport at half past four or five the next morning. But a Portuguese person who we knew in Uruguay invited us to go to a house party and as we were coming back from that, we went to go into a bar but there was some confusion, and the doormen started to push some of our team-mates. 

“One of them started to take a gun out, which was really scary. There was some more pushing and shoving and then we ran off. Our group got away but one group got caught by the police and were arrested.”

Once exonerated, the players were released the next morning without charge and flew home, free to take up their assorted day jobs without fear of any further recrimination from the Union. 

At this point Portugal had five months to prepare for their biggest ever challenge. Inspirational head coach Tomas Morais had the players training before and after work and many sacrifices had to be made, and favours called upon.

Luis ran a vet clinic for cats and dogs, as well as having a sideline in delivering calves for the local farming community. Thankfully those around him mucked in to help him realise his dream of playing at a World Cup. “Sometimes I had emergencies to deal with and had to leave camp and come back but the coaches were very understanding,” he says. “Also, in 2007, work was going well but the business wasn’t as big as it is today, and I was fortunate that my four associates were able to cover for me.”

While Portugal were set to step into the unknown in France, they were assured of phenomenal support, not only as the tournament’s underdogs but because of the huge Portuguese diaspora there. 

Immigration from Portugal to France was especially high in a period from the late 1950s to early 1970s. Portugal, one of the oldest nation-states in Europe, was under an authoritarian, far-right regime at the time and was economically poor and hundreds of thousands of Portuguese wanted out. In seventeen years from 1958 to 1975, the population of Portuguese people in France rose from 20,000 to 750,000, according to reports, as immigrants sought better work opportunities, mainly in construction. 

On 9th September 2007, when Portugal took to the field at Stade Geoffroy-Guichard in St Etienne, for their tournament debut against Scotland, it must’ve felt to Os Lobos’s players that almost every single one of those immigrants had come to cheer them on. Lock Goncalo Uva was certainly taken aback by the scenes that greeted them en route to the match.  “As soon as we qualified, we knew we would have strong support,” says Goncalo, who won a century of caps and now commentates on Os Lobos matches for TV. “Paris is the city with the second largest Portuguese population after Lisbon, and then it’s Bordeaux. But it was only when we got to St Etienne that it really sunk in. It really was something else.

“I would say it was an hour and a half drive to the stadium, and when we took the slip road off the motorway, we only had about eight hundred metres to go but it took ages because there was a sea of people cheering for us. Unforgettable.”

Goncalo and his brother Vasco were two of a handful of professional rugby players in the Portugal squad, having both signed for Montpellier the year before, and they were joined in France by their cousin, João Uva.

As family occasions go, that Scotland match was extra special. All three Uvas started, Goncalo at four, João at six and Vasco at seven and the anthems that day were sung with more gusto than ever before. “Recently I sat down and watched a replay of the Scotland game on video and it gave me chills,” admits Goncalo, the youngest of the three. 

Portugal had gone into the tournament with a few goals. One was to ensure they scored at least one try in every match, and against Scotland it was Pedro Carvalho who obliged. A final score of 56-10 gave them a measure of how big a mountain they had to climb, though. 

Proving that there is no place to hide at a Rugby World Cup, Portugal faced the All Blacks in their second match in Lyon. A second-half try through replacement prop Rui Cordeiro and a drop goal from halfway by Gonçalo Malheiro were celebrated as if the World Cup itself had been won. Rarely, if ever, can a 108-13 defeat have left the beaten team with smiles as broad. 

At least Portugal had the consolation of showing the All Blacks who was boss in a friendly, five-a-side football kickabout once the game was over. “Chris Jack was the one I really looked up to at the time, he was one hell of a player,” says Goncalo. “After the game I went to the New Zealand locker room and he gave me his shirt, shorts and socks and one of the Kiwi players turned to the rest of them and said, ‘guys, we have a new team-mate’. I was living the dream, enjoying the moment.

“Some of our reserves ended up playing a football game with them, I was too tired but it was a good laugh to watch and we had a few beers afterwards. We beat them at that, Richie McCaw played. It is those kind of memories that stay with you.”

Losing 31-5 to Italy in their next game was no disgrace considering the thrashing handed out by the Azzurri in qualification, and gave Os Lobos confidence going into their most winnable game against Romania. Fancying their chances of ending the tournament on a high, Portugal edged a tight first-half in Toulouse 7-0. However, Romania used their forward dominance to get on top and scored twice in the final quarter for a 14-10 victory. 

Goncalo had the consolation of being named by All Blacks legend Sean Fitzpatrick in the ‘Tier 2 Team of the Tournament’, alongside Mamuka Gorgodze at lock. Such an accolade was validation for not only his performances but those of his team-mates around him and helped to raise the profile of the squad to those back home. 

Fuelled by the Rugby World Cup, participation levels in Portugal more than doubled, from 3,876 registered rugby players before the tournament started to 8,300 in the weeks and months that followed. “The game exploded here in those six weeks,” says Xico. “At my club [Técnico], we went from one hundred kids to four hundred, and it was the same at all the clubs, it was massive.

“Before home internationals, we have kids’ festivals and that would normally involve a thousand kids but after that you had three thousand. Imagine that.”

Back then, the clubs did not have the facilities or the coaches to tap into the surge in demand and the opportunity to create a lasting legacy for rugby in Portugal was lost. “After 2007, things went so fast and no one was expecting that,” adds Luis. “A lot of people tried to get into rugby and the clubs didn’t have the structure, they weren’t prepared for it. Now, the clubs are more structured.

“Also, we have Lusitanos [the Portuguese franchise in Rugby Europe’s Super Cup],” he continues. “This was there in the past but it didn’t work as well as it does now. As a union, we need to try and keep this franchise working. I think it will be really important to develop newcomers to the national team. They will be training in a professional way and work like semi-pros. I think Lusitanos can be a way to keep motivating younger players to go into the national team.”

Unfortunately just as interest post-RWC 2007 was piqued, results reached a peak. Stalwarts like props Rui Cordeiro and Joaquim Ferreira retired and after one final hurrah back in Lisbon, Luis joined them in hanging up his boots. The rot quickly set in. Portugal only won one of their next ten Tests after the Romania defeat, and while teams like Russia and Georgia continued to advance, Os Lobos were going backwards.

The next two Rugby World Cups passed them by and after narrowly avoiding the drop to the Rugby Europe Trophy in 2014 and 2015, Os Lobos were relegated to the third tier of Rugby Europe’s competition structure in 2016, the same year that the Portugal men’s sevens team lost its place as a core team on the World Series, adding further insult to injury.  

While Portugal easily adapted to life in the trophy, sweeping all before them in back-to-back Grand Slam years, the truth of the matter was that they didn’t have much success in the promotion play-off [against the bottom team in the Rugby Europe Championship] and so it took them until 2019 to finally go up.

The lack of infrastructure in domestic rugby, a decade of poor results by the national team and Covid all contributed to the sport retreating from a position of relative strength, post-2007. Currently there are 7,214 registered players in Portugal – around ten per cent less than 2007/08, spread around 43 clubs.

The arrival of Patrice Lagisquet’s CV through the post couldn’t have been more timely. 

Known as ‘The Bayonne Express’ during his playing days, Lagisquet’s coaching career had seen him win both the Top 14 and European Challenge Cup with Biarritz. Now working in insurance, alongside his rugby coaching, the dashing winger was as safe a bet as any to turn Os Lobos’ fortunes around.

Lagisquet had been involved with the French national team in the past and, as such, a man of his pedigree came at a price, one that a couple of board members weren’t prepared to pay. Xico wasn’t one of them. “Patrice sent in his CV to us and as soon as we received it, two board members said we don’t have money to pay for him,” he recalls. “But we had good negotiations and while I’m not saying we made him a very rich man, we reached a fair agreement and appointed him in 2019.”

With Lagisquet on board, Portugal not only had someone with a cool head and professional expertise but also with the ability to tap into the previously largely untouched Portuguese talent pool playing in France. Half of the current squad ply their trade there, including key figures like hooker Mike Tadjer, a stalwart of Perpignan. Lagisquet was able to place Portugal’s best young players with French clubs, to develop their game at a higher standard than the domestic club competition, Campeonato Nacional de Rugby Divisão de Honra, could offer. 

“Patrice has not only been important in placing the players at the right clubs but also in advising them and talking to the clubs and making sure the level they will play is best for their development,” says Luis. “Patrice, in France, can be quite persuasive and is an important person; not only is he an international player in France but also a Top 14-winning coach. One word from him is more important than a highlights video of a player. 

“In the recent past, Portuguese players were not necessarily recognised outside of the country, and it was seen as a risk taking a Portuguese player because we are not a big rugby nation. Nowadays, that is really changing and we have a lot of young Portuguese players developing in France, and some of them are getting really important in their clubs and getting interest from the Top 14. 

“[Raffaele] Storti is a regular starter in Pro D2 [with Beziers] and you’ve got others like Vincent Pinto, a very young full-back/wing [with Pau].”

While the French clubs had been reluctant to release their players to Os Lobos in the past, with Lagisquet in charge they became much more amenable to the idea. The professionalism of the French-based players combined with passion of the home-grown Portuguese was starting to make for a potent mix.

Current Os Lobos captain Tomas Appleton, a dentist by profession, says the appointment of Lagisquet was a watershed moment: it was time to get out or get serious. “The thing that has really changed for us is the way we have faced rugby, as people,” he says. “When I started playing for the national team in 2013, we used to go to the gym at 6am and train at 7pm, 8pm, and we lived our lives like that, fitting rugby in and around our work. But you cannot perform at your best if you are training when you are tired.

“The first time we met, a lot of players didn’t accept that if we wanted to be at the 2023 World Cup, which was our aim, we would have to train like professionals because everyone else was professional.

“A lot of players tried to change training schedules and times to suit them but, for him [Patrice] it was non-negotiable. He insisted that the training schedule was met and that those who didn’t agree, or weren’t able to speak to their bosses about it, they left. 

“Others like me, we were able to change our lives completely and, in the end it made a big difference. A typical training week after the change meant we’d usually train at 6pm on a Monday, then Tuesday morning and afternoon, again on Wednesday morning and do the captain’s run on Friday.”

Patrice’s first matches in charge came on a November tour to South America, where a narrow defeat to Brazil was followed by a narrow win over Chile. One of his first moves was to bring Luis on board as an assistant in time for the 2020 Rugby Europe Championship. It made a lot of sense as he had been the successful head coach of the U20s, many of whom had stepped up into the senior team.

Under Luis, Portugal won the European U20s competition three years in a row and twice finished runners-up in the World Rugby U20 Trophy, narrowly losing to Japan in both finals, in 2017 and 2019.

Winger Raffaele Storti was one of the sensational young players starting to emerge along with other backs such as fly-half Jeronimo Portela and outside centre Rodrigo Marta. “The union and Portuguese rugby produced some good players during that period and there has been good work from the clubs,” says Luis. “We don’t have a huge number of players but the clubs, that are also few, are working well in terms of developing young players. 

“Rugby in Portugal is very amateur, we have some foreign players who get paid but the majority are not even semi-pro. We get issues when they finish university because they start to work, to have families and because rugby is getting more and more serious at club level, with more training, some of the older players retire too soon. This means we get a lot of players playing at club level very young.”

While Luis and his 2007 team-mates had been hailed as a golden generation, Portuguese rugby had another special group of players on their hands, many of whom had been inspired to first take up the game as children after watching Os Lobos at the World Cup. “It’s a different time,” says Tomas, the skipper, who was able to attend the Italy game in 2007 in person, “a different team but when you have an almost fully amateur team reach the World Cup, it is the biggest inspiration you can find. Now we have a lot of professional players, especially in France.”

While most of his peers were strangers to rugby, Tomas was a member of the Portugal national under-15 team that was playing in a sevens tournament in France while the World Cup was on. “Some of my team-mates now in the national team started to play because of the 2007 World Cup, there was a big hype around it, the media did their job,” he says. “In schools, everyone is crazy about football and plays football, you cannot find a rugby ball. But I got one of my best mates from school [Bruno Medeiros, 32 caps] into rugby and he played with me for a few years in the national team.

“Hopefully, it will happen again because the young kids need a new generation to inspire them, and I think we can be that generation. It is our job to get more and more people into rugby.”

With so many of the current squad coming up through the ranks together, it is no surprise that Os Lobos are close-knit and to some degree, telepathic in their understanding of each other’s game.

“What I think is very important is that this group of players who played together for the U20s are very close, they get along very well, so they help each other and they like to train together,” says Luis. “The French-born players also get into this spirit when they come along and get involved.

“The group know the strengths and weaknesses of each other and the team spirit is really, really high. Even when we had some tough losses and the unity of the group could be destroyed, I think we managed to cope quite well.”

No loss was tougher than the 28-27 home defeat to Romania two matches into the 2021 Rugby Europe Championship when their opponents scored two converted tries in the final six minutes.

With qualification for Rugby World Cup 2023 dependent on combined results from the 2021 and 2022 tournaments, Portugal could ill afford to lose vital points.

Then, in February the following year, at the halfway point of the qualification race, Portugal had a golden opportunity to become the first team to beat Georgia on Georgian soil in the Rugby Europe Championship since 2004 but, in the end, they had to settle for a 25-25 draw.

Away defeats to Spain and Romania meant they missed out on one of the coveted top two places with Georgia and Romania taking their place in France as Europe 1 and Europe 2. However, due to Spain losing points for fielding an ineligible player, Portugal were promoted to third place in the combined table and, as such, became Europe’s representatives at the Final Qualification Tournament for the World Cup, lining up alongside Hong Kong, Kenya and the USA in Dubai. The USA would start as slight favourites given their pedigree in qualifying for every tournament bar 1995, while Kenya and Hong Kong effectively made up numbers.

With big wins against both the other teams, the destiny of the 20th and final ticket to France 2023 came down, as expected, to the result of the final match between the USA and Portugal. Portugal could afford a draw given their superior points difference but with seconds remaining, their fate rested on whether or not Samuel Marques could keep his nerve, and block out the noise from one of his own team-mates, the exciting and excitable Storti, as the lined up a crucial kick at goal.  “I went to Sam and told him the whole of Portugal was counting on him,” confesses Raffaele. “It probably it wasn’t the smartest thing to say as he had already enough pressure to handle, but it just slipped out of me, I said it without even thinking. Fortunately, he is a player with a lot of experience and knows how to handle the pressure well.”

He did just that, his dead-straight kick going between the small, Subbuteo-style posts, and the players celebrated wildly, on the pitch, at least, but nowhere near as wildly as Luis and his cohorts fifteen years earlier. “After the game [a 16-16 draw],” recalls Luis, “I was talking with some of the players and saying it was the second time I would be going to the World Cup; the last time with a one-point difference and this time with a draw. It is always nail-biting. In Portugal, we do it the hard way. But it shows a lot of spirit, that is what I believe.”  

With the clean-cut, Tomas Appleton – think Clark Kent but without the glasses – as their captain, this Portugal team reflects the more sober, acceptable side of rugby. “Rugby has changed a lot, and I don’t want to sound rude because I love Luis Pissarra, he is a really good friend of mine, but in 2007, the sport was more like a ‘caveman’ sport. I know most of them and I can totally understand why six of them ended up in jail!” jokes Tomas. 

Tomas’s 2022 team did however enjoy a good reception back home. “We had a huge welcoming at the airport in Lisbon when we got back from Dubai, with TV and stuff, and all of us went to celebrate together,” says Tomas, admitting that life is different to what it was only two months before.  “When you get to that stage and you qualify in such an inspiring way like we did, there was a lot of hype again, and it was really nice that people recognised your hard work. 

“As an example, I went to a fancy restaurant with my mother and my wife one time and the manager came to the table and told me, ‘I just want to congratulate you on qualifying for the World Cup, this is on the house’. It was very nice and it has happened quite a few times since.”

As a senior player of ten years’ experience, Tomas is currently the front man for Os Lobos not only on the pitch but also around the negotiating table. For the Lisbon-based dentist, getting money out of the union can sometimes feel like pulling teeth. Talks are currently taking place with the Portuguese union about how Os Lobos’ players will be rewarded for their time in the lead-up to the World Cup and at the tournament itself, in addition to any performance-based pay.

With World Cup qualification comes increased revenue from sponsorship and the like, and while Tomas would play for just the love of the jersey, as he has done since his debut in 2013, he feels their efforts and extra dedication should be acknowledged. “The union president takes care of it and I have a big job on it, most of the meetings and discussions are with me,” he says. “What was proposed was that we would get prize [bonus] money for wins [in the qualifiers] but we would only get it if we got to the World Cup. 

“We missed the first qualifier and ended up fourth in the group stage [before Spain had points deducted], so all that money, we didn’t get.”

However, the wins over Hong Kong and Kenya were rewarded as was the draw with USA. “Yes, the draw was like a win,” he adds. And rightly so.

If Portugal can tap into the fact they are going to be most neutral’s second-favourite team with the thrilling way they like to play the game, almost like a throwback to the wonderful France team of the 1980s that Lagisquet once graced, there should be no shortage of sponsors knocking at their door.

“We know rugby can generate money from sponsorship and everything. I have been playing for the national team for ten years and I have had next to nothing compensation-wise for playing,” says Tomas. “During preparation for the World Cup players will have to stop working and the union will have to compensate us for the money that we will lose, and we are also talking about World Cup prize money as well.”

Portugal will face Wales, Georgia, Australia and Fiji in France later this year. “I don’t want to sound too cocky but we are looking to win at least one game at the World Cup. That is one of our main objectives,” says Tom. “To be honest, the pressure is not on us, we will just go and enjoy the moment and make people happy.”

While everyone connected to Portuguese rugby has their own story to tell about 2007, whether it is Portela seeing his father, Miguel, play as a centre in the squad sixteen years ago, Tomas watching as a wide-eyed teenager from the stands, Luis [Pissarra] will be unique in both playing for his country and coaching them at a World Cup. He can’t wait. “2007 was the biggest experience and it was really exciting to be there,” he says. “What I think about this group, they will do different things. They will be excited because the crowds and the stadiums will be big and we’ll be playing big teams, but this group of players are much more used to playing at this level than my generation. 

“They have been playing big games against the likes of Japan and Italy whereas my generation were not prepared to play games at this level and this group are better and can compete with the big nations in a way that we couldn’t. 

“I am not saying we will be winning a lot of games but I am pretty sure we will be competitive in a lot of them. The experienced French players bring a lot to the team in terms of confidence, experience and knowledge of the game,” he adds. 

“That French mindset is very powerful and whilst I don’t like talking about French and Portugese players as two groups, because they are one, the Portuguese players bring the fire and speed and a bit of madness. 

“Sometimes our young players get crazy with the things that they do.”

In a sport where the minutiae of every detail is increasingly being scrutinised, a little bit of crazy is probably just what the World Cup needs.

Story by Jon Newcombe

Pictures by António Miguel Lamas

This extract was taken from issue 21 of Rugby.
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