Stade Rennais and Portugal player

From Porto to Rennes. Linha de Ensaio had the pleasure of talking with Isabel Ozório.

Let’s start with the beginning: how did you start playing rugby?

I started playing rugby when I was 14 years old, at CDUP (Porto). I got a message about an open training session and thought I’d give it a go. Until then I had only played individual sports (taekwondo, tennis) and when I started playing rugby, I left the other ones behind. I really enjoyed the fact that rugby is a team sport with a lot of team spirit and that was what made me stay.

How was your career until now?

After playing in CDUP for 5 years, I moved to Lisbon and started playing in CR Técnico and stayed there until 2015. At that time, Sporting CP was creating a team, they invited me to join the club and I didn’t hesitate. I stayed there until October 2022 with two gaps in between: in 2017 I moved to New Zealand to play for the Counties Manuaku and I was also in the United States, with the Rhinos (San Clemente, CA). Right now, I am in France where I play for Stade Rennais in the Elite 1.

How did you get to French rugby?

It wasn’t planned. My idea was to stay on the US until December so that I could play 7s but they changed their schedule and I decided to come back. When I arrived in Portugal I was contacted by a French club that was looking for a fly half. After that initial contact, two or three more clubs contacted me and I ended up accepting one of the offers.

I am in the French first division (Elite 1) and, despite having a young team, we have a lot of potential. Some of the players for the French national team (both XV and 7s) play for us which is great. It has been a good challenge for me where I’ve been working to get my space in the team. Fortunately, I’ve been clocking a lot of minutes.

How did you adapt to the life in France?

It went well but it wasn’t as easy as when I moved to New Zealand or the US. I think that there are two main differences between Portugal and France: the people and the weather. In Portugal, the people are warmer. However, the club has been really helpful and helped me a lot with everything. Regarding the weather, I never thought that it could have such an impact in my mood! I lived by the sea my whole life and here is a “bit” different. It’s really cold so my life outside rugby is a bit different. Right now, the language is still the most difficult challenge…

How is your week, rugby-wise?

Most of the team studies or works which means that we can only train at the end of the day. We have three sessions (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday), between 6 and 9pm, where we have three blocks: gym/physical training, video analysis, and pitch. We also have some physical sessions at lunch time and, in my specific case, I also have specific kicking training. There are also two skills sessions per week but those are not compulsory.

What are the main differences between the Portuguese and the French leagues?

Regarding the game itself, things in France are faster and more intense: the players are stronger and bigger, have more skill and look at the game differently. The squads are more homogenous in terms of quality which allows to train and play with a higher intensity.

In Portugal, is normal to have National Team players playing with people that only started playing rugby a year ago or so. That’s why we need to have more than one coach, so we can separate the players and train better. That doesn’t happen in Portugal. Here, every team has at least 3 coaches, each one of them with their own speciality.

Regarding the league itself, there are many more players and teas. In the Elite 1, we have 12 teams and each one of them needs to have a second team that plays in the Reserve Elite league.

Another big difference is that there are a lot of women involved in the sport: management, coaches, referees – it’s great to see!

What do you think that we need in Portugal to grow women’s rugby?

We need to start with the basics: more players, and more and better coaches. I have been very lucky to have great coaches both in the clubs where I played and in the national team but I know that that doesn’t happen everywhere. Then I think that we really need to have a long-term plan and strategy for what we what to achieve.

We need a plan for the national teams (both XV and 7s). Up to now, the only time where we had something like that was when qualified for the final qualification tournament for the Olympic Games in 2016. And that only happened when we qualified. Until then, there was nothing.

As a player, we give everything we have but it’s clear to me that we could be at a different level if we had better conditions. Things are improving for our XV team but we can’t lose track of things when it comes to 7s.

How can we make rugby more relevant in Portugal?

First of all, we need to demystify the sport: there are still a lot of people in Portugal that doesn’t know what rugby is or has the wrong image in their heads. It gets worse when we are talking about children and girls in particular. It is imperative that we take rugby to children so they can try it. I don’t know anyone that tried rugby and said they didn’t like it and that’s where the clubs need to do their homework.

I think that we are not doing that first contact with rugby well. It’s important that the Union has a growth plan (like all the other unions do) but clubs need to do things better – there’s a lot of margin to grow.

Another important thing is the way we communicate. Not only the timing but the content and how we do it. We need to be more careful with how we communicate with our target audience.

What are your expectations for the rest of the Rugby Europe Trophy? And what do you think are the main differences to the Rugby Europe Championship?

 

We know that we play well enough not only to be in this competition but to be promoted to the Championship. No disrespect to the teams in the Trophy but we hope to get promoted and stay in the Championship as we have the potential for more. We have been playing well enough to win and when we manage to make fewer mistakes and increase our intensity, we will be even better.

Regarding the Championship, I think it’ll be much more difficult, especially in the matches against Spain. They have a very strong domestic league, well-structured and with a lot of investment. More recently, the clubs have started to sign players from the Southern Hemisphere, increasing the level of the league and of the players.

However, I think we can put up a bit of a fight. It’ll depend a lot on what we can do in terms of preparation closer to the matches and who’s going to be available for those matches. Because we are a smaller country, we can get together more often which doesn’t happen in Spain.

Do you think that it’s utopic to qualify to the Rugby World Cup when the number of teams increasing from 12 to 16?

In terms of quality, I think we can do it. However, we know that quality alone might not be enough. The new qualification system is very new and I don’t exactly know how it works so we don’t really have a clear path to the World Cup.

What do you think we need to do?

One of the challenges we will have is the amount of players available for that. I think that we need to create regular u18/u20 competitions so that players that age can have more game time. We need a strong u18 national team, with regular training and tournaments so that the players can develop before they get to the main squad.

On the other hand, and similarly to what the male team did, we need to reach out to “foreign” players that qualify to play for Portugal due to their heritage. I’m sure that we have a lot of players in France, Spain, UK that would love to play for Portugal.

We are witnessing a growth in women’s rugby and we have to make sure that it doesn’t stop. I believe that the current players will help that and ensure that things are in a better shape for the generations to come. Our main concern needs to be what we do on the pitch but we have to help the game and find other ways of helping.

What other plans do you have for your career? Do you think about retirement?

I don’t know… I think that, sometimes, overplanning can harm us. Right now, I want to enjoy playing rugby as much as I can. I’m not yet sure if I’ll stay in France next season or if I’ll return to Portugal – we shall see.

In the future, I’d love be a coach or be involved in management but it’s not something I think about yet.