Portugal are the only side other than Georgia and Romania to have topped the ENC, but over the past 4 years have languished nearer the basement of the top division. As the older 2007 RWC generation of players has faded out, here's a look at the seemingly random and bizarre selection policy they have taken in their rebuild.
In 2003, Portugal won the ENC with a Grand Slam. That remains the only time a side has broken the dominance Romanian and Georgia have had over the competition.
That same pool of players took Portugal to a World Cup, where despite being crushed by Scotland and New Zealand, their efforts against Italy and Romania generally won admiration from many fans.
Since then though the Lobos fortunes have gone downhill and the last RWC cycle was a dreadful disappointment.
Their record against top 22 ranked sides over the 2012-15 cycle was 3 wins from 27. They have finished 5th for 3 of the past 4 ENC tournaments, the only time they managed 4th being in 2013 when Spain were without numerous of their French brigade and had a horror season.
They had relied upon their 2007 RWC generation of players for a long while after that tournament, and were still essentially trying to reach the 2015 RWC with several of those players.
In 2013 they still had 10 players from their 2007 RWC squad, and their RWC qualifying match against Russia in 2014 featured old veterans from the 2003 ENC Grand Slam such as Joao Correia, Vasco Uva and Antonio Aguilar.
It was clear after that there was going to need a big rebuild, but three successive coaches Federico Sousa, Joao Luis Pinto and now Ian Smith have found that difficult, and the startling numbers on quantity of players they've used bears that out.
Since November 2013, a mind boggling 48 debuts have been handed out. That is more than any top 22 ranked side, and in most cases comfortably more despite playing fewer matches.
Overall 86 players have been used over that period, a total only serial squad changers Spain can beat.
A complete lack of continuity to the squad has been a huge problem for both Iberian sides, with neither fully reliably being able to access French based players, and in Portugal's case a massive influx of youth.
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| Portugal U20 team of last year already has several full caps |
Of those 48 new caps, 24 of them were aged 21 or under. Hordes of youngsters born 1993, 1994 or 1995 have been fast tracked to the senior team since failure to qualify for RWC.
The problem is though is it is hard to figure out a plan. The necessary squad rebuild appears to be being done in such a scattergun way. Many players are just appearing for a couple matches and then disappearing.
37 players have played either 1 or 2 matches for Portugal over the past 2 years.
That is just crazy, and a far cry from the consistent selection of the previous generation, where Vasco Uva became ever player outside Tier 1 to reach the 100 cap milestone, and 7 other players had over 70 caps.
The other thing that inhibits them is the staunch proud amateurism still within Portuguese rugby.
In many ways this is similar to Uruguay, although Los Teros unlike Portugal have at least have coherent selections and appear to now be keen to make their first steps in the right direction to maintain their RWC place.
For Portugal though, who like Uruguay at youth level tend to be stronger relative to their senior side, do not appear to have any ambition to create a more professional pathway for those players to build on that to senior level.
Eventually, they'd hope some of their younger players can gain more experience, and be bolstered by the likes of Julien Bardy and Samuel Marques from France (who are turning up increasingly rarely), so they should be somewhat stronger for RWC qualifying in 2017.
But currently the squad selections look an incoherent mess, they do not want to professionalise, the results are looking grim, and their chances of returning to the RWC in 2019 looks slim.
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