Last call at the Final Chance Saloon
Written by: Nuno Madeira do O
It’s going to be in Dubai, a country full of tradition in the world of Rugby XV, that Portugal is going to fight for the golden ticket that qualifies the team to the World Cup (France, next Semptember). The qualification tournament starts on the 6th November and the Lobos will face three teams: Kenya, Hong Kong, and the U.S.A. The tournament will have a round robin format: all teams play against each other and in the end, the ones with most points win.
In this piece, we are going to try to understand a bit better what stands in Portugal’s way and how the Lobos are doing.
Portugal v Hong Kong, 6th November, 2h30pm (Lisbon time)
Portugal will arrive in Dubai on the 20th place of World Rugby’s ranking and, in the first match, they’ll face Hong Kong, 22nd in the world. The Dragons, as they’re known, arrived to this tournament after losing against Tonga (44-22) in the Asia/Pacific qualification match. It was their second (!) match since November 2019, in which they defeated South Korea with a penalty on the last minute of play.
This is one of the points that gives Portugal some advantage in this match: since the last World Cup, Hong Kong played only two matches whilst Portugal played 23. This was due to COVID-19, that froze all rugby in Asia and with it the Asia Rugby Championship, the yearly competition that opposes Hong Kong, Malaysia, and South Korea.
None of the Hong Kong players plays in the top European leagues (Premiership, Championship, Top-14, ProD2, URC), with the vast majority playing in the domestic league (that has only six teams). Hong Kong never qualified to the World Cup and Portugal has good chances of winning this match and to give the team the best start possible in this tournament.
Portugal v Kenya, 12th November, 12pm (Lisboa time)
Kenya will arrive to Dubai on the 33rd place of the World Rugby ranking. The Simbas played the Africa Cup 2022, where they beat Algeria in a crazy match (36-33), before playing (and losing) against Namibia in the final (36-0).
Similarly to Hong Kong, rugby 7s is very popular in Kenya with the national team playing in the World Series (one of the 15 core teams of the competition). None of the Kenyan players plays in Europe with the majority also playing in the domestic league – the Kenya Cup – an amateur competition with 11 teams.
Kenya can cause some problems to Portugal but from what we have seen in the Africa Cup, they will have some problems in defence, especially in the set pieces. If Portugal can dominate from the beginning, it shouldn’t have problems in winning the match and can even rest some players for the final (and perhaps decisive) weekend of the competition.
Portugal v United States of America, 18th November, 3:30pm (Lisbon time)
The last match of the tournament will see the two best placed teams in the World Rugby ranking play each other, with Portugal facing the United States (19th). The Eagles have been to the World Cup 8 times (having only missed the 1995 edition) and it’s quite surprising that they see themselves in this position.
How did this happen? Due to the pandemic, it was decided that only the United States and Canada were going to play for two of the three places that America has in the World Cup (the first spot was already taken by Argentina).
In South America, Uruguay beat Chile and Brazil and qualified straight to the Americas final and a Chilean victory over Brazil (23-13) gave the Condores the right to fight for that coveted third spot.
In North America, the United States faced Canada and despite losing the first leg (34-21), the turned things around and beat them 59-50 in the aggregate, meaning that they were going to face Uruguay whilst Canada was going to face Chile.
The first “surprise” in the US’s qualification tournament came when they lost in Montevideu (34-15), after having won the first leg (19-16). Because of that, Uruguay qualified directly to the World Cup and the U.S. were going to have to face the winner of Chile v Canada for the direct qualification.
Chile beat Canada (56-36 in the aggregate) and they were the team to beat, if the Eagles wanted to fly all the way to France. In the first leg, the U.S. beat the Condores (22-21) but, in a passionate second-leg match, Chile managed to win (31-29) and qualified for the World Cup for the first time.
So, after this trip to the amazing world of American rugby, what can we expect from this match?
Despite not going through a good patch, the U.S. are a powerful opponent that will cause a lot of problems to Portugal. Beside a professional domestic league, awash with cash (Major League Rugby (MLR), that has 13 clubs), 10 of their international players are in Europe including who is, perhaps, their main threat: AJ MacGinty, the Bristol Bears’ fly half that got his rugby education in the same school (Blackrock College, Dublin) where players like Brian O’Driscoll, Andrew Conway, and Leo Cullen went to. MacGinty makes a deadly combo with the scrum-half Ruben de Haas (Saracens) and Portugal must not give them time to think the game.
However, the quality of the starting XV and of those who start on the bench isn’t quite the same and, in both matches against Chile, coach Gary Gold went a long time without swapping any players. With that in mind, the Chilean coach stacked his bench with heavy players and excellent ball carriers that completely destroyed the US team in the last 20 minutes of the match.
If Portugal can be in control during the first 50-60 minutes and not go down towards the end (perhaps a 6/2 split on the bench?), it has a very good shot to qualify for France and to give its fans the biggest joy of 2022.
An extra bonus for this match: the World Cups of 2031 and 2033 (male and female) will be played in the U.S. It’d be very interesting to see how World Cup would react if the U.S. didn’t qualify to the World Cup only 8 years away from hosting it. Would they increase the number of teams in the competition? We shall see.
What about Portugal?
The last time we watched the Lobos playing, was in the Summer. Even though they lost all the matches (Italy 31-38; Argentina Jaguares 35-52; Georgia 23-14), the team got better between matches and improved in certain aspects of their game that had been problematic thus far (e.g. set pieces, performance in the last 20 minutes of the match). Since then, they were in a bootcamp three weeks ago, though no matches were played.
Regarding the players, the usual front row (Fernandes-Tadjer-Alves) have been getting regular game time in France, switching between the starting XV and the bench. In second-row, there’s the question of who’s going to join José Madeira (a regular starter in Grenoble that earned him three more years at the club): Steevy Cerqueira went from the ProD2 to the Nationale but has played regularly for Chambéry, Rafael Simões (that has shown that he can play well both at 5 or 8) has been playing the latter for the Lusitanos whilst Duarte Torgal has also been a constant presence in the Portuguese franchise.
The back row has several options to choose from: João Granate and David Wallis (with Rafael Simões completing the trio) have had plenty of minutes (at an excellent level) for the Lusitanos with the youngsters Xavier Cerejo and Manuel Picão coming in when required. Abroad, Thibault de Freitas (Floriac), played the first minutes of the season after injury and there is a lot of curiosity to see what Nicolas Martins (Angoulème) can bring to the squad.
At nine, Samuel Marques remains essential in Carcassone’s offensive play and has Pedro Lucas and João Bello as backups – both playing well, every time they are called to the Lusitanos squad. At ten, the situation is a bit more uncertain: Jerónimo Portela is yet to play for the Lusitanos (played the first minutes of the season with his club GD Direito, two weekends ago) and with Jorge Abecasis unavailable, the Lusitanos’ number 10 jersey, has been worn by either Francisco Meneres or Tomás Appleton, with the captain switching from centre to fly half.
Apart from that, it’s (almost) all good news for the Portuguese backs: Raffaele Storti has had an unbelievable start of the season at Bèziers and is the ProD2’s top try scorer (6). Rodrigo Marta had a similar start as his new club Dax (Nationale) and is also the top try scorer of the season (also 6 tries). Pedro Bettencourt (Oyonnax), José Lima (Narbonne), Simão Bento (Mont-de-Marsan) and Dany Antunes (Cognac) have played for their clubs whilst Manuel Cardoso Pinto and Nuno Sousa Guedes have caused all sorts of havoc in their opponent’s defences, every time they play in the Rugby Europe Super Cup. The only bad news is that Vincent Pinto is still recovering from injury and is yet to play a single minute for his club Pau (Top-14).
With so many options and if the team can reach the same level shown in recent matches, Portugal has excellent chances of qualifying for the World Cup – the second in its history – and confirm to the World how excellent its rugby has been in the past few years.
