Rugby Europe Trophy 7s
The Portuguese Woman’s 7s team was in Zagreb, for the first round of the Rugby Europe Trophy (11th and 12th June) and conquered the Bronze medal.
Written by: Nuno Madeira do O
Portugal was part of Pool C, together with Sweden, Norway, and Israel and in the first day of the competition, it was to come, to see and to conquer. In the first match, the Portuguese team beat Israel 39-0 (Maria João Costa, Mariana Marques (2), Daniela Correia, Vera Simões, Matilde Goes, Mariana Santos) in a game where Portugal controlled from the beginning to the end.
The second game had Portugal facing Norway and the victory smiled, once again, to the players under the command of João Moura. This time, the final score was 34-7 with Adelina Costa, Matilde Goes (2), Isabel Ozório (2), Mariana Santos (2), and Inês Spínola scoring for Portugal.
The third and last match of the group stage was against Sweden and Portugal won 38 against 5. This time, the try scorers for Portugal were Daniela Correia, Mariana Marques (2), Cátia Almeida, Maria João Costa, and Inês Spínola.
With these results, Portugal was through to the quarter-finals on top of the group with 111 points scored and only 12 conceded. That meant that Portugal would face Georgia the day after to decide who would progress to the semi-finals.
The match against Georgia had a very busy start with two yellow cards and a scary injury from a Georgian player. Despite that, Portugal, through Mariana Santos, managed to find a gap in the Georgian defence and score its first try.
However, Georgia scored close to half-time and pushed all decisions to the second half which started with another try from Mariana Santos. Georgia equalised two minutes later (12-12). With three minutes to go, Mariana Marques had a line break and ran across half the pitch by herself, scoring Portugal’s third try with Isabel Ozório converting the try and moving the scoreboard to 19-12.
With the clock on 0, Georgia scored again but missed the conversion, which meant that Portugal was through to the semi-finals.
The semi-final was played against Italy and Portugal score its first try with only 30 seconds on the clock through Inês Spínola. The Italian team defended very aggressively and wouldn’t give Portugal the space it needed to play the fluid rugby, full of offloads, that the National Team had shown thus far. Eventually, that pressure came to fruition and the Italian team equalised with 2 minutes left in the first half.
Portugal was close to score twice but one had to wait until the end of the first half to see Inês Spínola score her second try of the match and take the teams to half-time with the score showing 10-5 to Portugal.
The second half showed a more resilient Italian team and after several phases, that meant another try with two minutes to go. Motivated by that try the Italians kept on pushing and scored another try, which meant they were through to the final (10-15).
For the Bronze medal, Portugal played Sweden again and, even though the score wasn’t as big as the match from the group stage (10-0), it was enough for Portugal to win and secure silverware.
Linha de Ensaio spoke with Inês Spínola about the tournament:
Third place, bronze medal. What are your thoughts on the tournament?
We feel like we have accomplished our mission. Despite not having a lot of time to prepare as we were involved with the XV team, we did well. Our goal was to stay on the top-4, so this bronze medal is in line with what we wanted. However, we want to do even better in the future.
Is there any disappointment for not being able to reach the final in a match that could have gone either way?
Yes, definitely. We could have beaten Italy – it was a very tight match where we started strong and we could have won. We know that we missed a few crucial opportunities and had a missed on a few details that didn’t allow us to score more tries. We had the chances but couldn’t turn them intro tries which is very frustrating but this is 7s and until the end, all is possible.
What is your personal opinion on the tournament?
I think we have a good team, capable of playing good rugby and that was shown on all the matches we played. We finished day 1 with three victories and in the second day, despite losing one match, we reached our goal. We have to learn how to be consistent from the beginning to the end and take full advantage of having the ball.
What are your expectations for the next stage?
After Zagreb, I believe that next weekend we will do even better. We are regathering on Tuesday in Lisbon so we can start training and fix some of the mistakes that we identified like keeping calm when we have the ball. If we do that, I’m sure we will be even more successful.
The next stage of the Rugby Europe Trophy 7s will take place on the 18th and 19th June in Budapest, and Portugal will play in Pool C, together with Sweden, Hungary and Moldova.
