When will Portugal become a serious REC competitor again?

The beginning of Portugal's fall to REC relegation candidates first started following the disappointing RWC 2015 qualifying campaign of 2013/14. That was the last attempt at reaching the big stage for most of the generation that took them there in 2007 (apart from Gonçalo Uva who was the last of that team to retire this year), but it didn't go quite as hoped and coach Errol Brain got sacked half way through it.

His assistant Frederico Sousa took over as coach for the next year, but Portugal could not recover their RWC campaign. In fact they were even less competitive and he got sacked after 8 tests. However short that time in charge was though Sousa still managed more matches than all of his next three successors.

João Luís Pinto only lasted 7 tests in 2014/15 with his last being an away defeat to Kenya. After him came Frenchman Olivier Baragnon, but his time in charge ended up similar to that of Romania's recent appointment as he quickly fell out with the FPR and got sacked after just 3 tests. So by the time of the REC campaign in 2016 where Portugal were on their fifth coach within four years in Scotsman Ian Smith.

This was a team who previously had the same coach Tomaz Morais for over 70 tests and the best part of a decade from 2001 to 2010. Now results were diminishing and they were burning through a number of coaches. Following the 2016 REC under Ian Smith where Portugal were relegated for the first ever time and a period of instability and worsening results a change of approach seems to have come about with the appointment in September 2016 of ex GD Direito coach Martim Aguiar.

Martim Aguiar unveiled as the new
Portugal coach in September 2016

Notable about Aguiar's appointment was in the opening press conference is the comments of FPR president Luís Cassiano Neves. He talked of no "immediate pressure" of results for Aguiar but the main focus and goal being qualifying for the RWC in 2023.

So suddenly Portugal went from quite a change of appointing a coach virtually every year to talking of no pressure on the coach and of focusing on a project to reach a tournament 7 years away.

In practice what this idea of "building a project" for 2023 basically seems to be be though is throwing so many young players into the team that recent selections have not far off resembled a University team and almost accepting remaining in the RET for the time being.

Over the past two years under Aguiar Portugal have fielded a greater quantity of young players than any other international team and have done by a comfortable margin too. That is of course in spite of being a team that plays relatively fewer tests than most top 20 sides over that period as well.

According to ESPN Scrum statistics Portugal under Aguiar's 17 tests in charge have used 22 players aged 20 or under (by comparison next highest is Georgia who have fielded 13 over that period, and all 10 Tier 1 sides combined have fielded 25). On average 9 of his starting XV has been aged 24 or under.

Portugal U20 2017

If you look at the average age of their matchday squad that played Romania in November the average was just 23. That's over two years younger than any of the top 22 international teams fielded that month, and four years younger than the general average age of 27 for an international team.

It's only 15 months since Portugal reached the final of the World Rugby U20 Trophy in 2017 for their best ever finish in the tournament and they have wasted no time bringing those players through to the senior team. Already 16 of that squad are now fully capped internationals which has flown past the previous record of 12 for most players from a single U20 squad reaching the full national team within a year.

Portugal have been awarding full international caps to their successful 2017 U20 team at a record pace

However when you look closer that is not the first time Portugal have been doing this. Their U20 Trophy squad of 2013 is in fact the joint record holder for most players to have become full internationals with 18, whilst the squad from 2015 has produced 17 full internationals.

So a large quantity of young players have come into international rugby, but a number of those are just coming in for a handful of caps and then make way for the next batch coming in. As of yet it is hard to see what project Portugal are building whilst the team keeps changing.

Aguiar's team went into a REC promotion/relegation playoff against Romania selecting a 23 man squad with an average age of 23, and an average 7 caps with 17 of 23 not yet on 10 caps. Romania had a 23 with precisely 700 more caps in total. Florin Vliacu had more than Portugal's starting XV between them.

Samuel Marques is one of a handful
of French-Portuguese players who would
offer valuable experience and quality but
have not played for them for years now

Meanwhile experience in the form of players in professional leagues has largely been missing. With the exception of Francisco Fernándes and Jean Sousa who were called up only for the Germany RWC qualifying match, all the other heritage players like Julien Bardy, Mike Tadjer, Samuel Marques, Aurélien Beco have not been seen for years now. Even the two homegrown Portuguese players José Lima and Pedro Bettencourt who play professionally in France and England have not been seen throughout the past year.

The question is how long will this RET phase of Portugal's inconsistent inexperienced selections continue for until they start to compete more seriously?

It's a shame for Portugal as on paper they have the personnel to certainly be a capable REC level team at the very least. But if you look at that selection against Romania, or even the one that got a surprise opportunity to reach the RWC Repechage against Germany this year, those were not ones that were genuinely making the best attempt Portugal could possibly manage at achieving their best results. Neither was the team they selected which very nearly lost to Poland last March.

When we the reach qualifying period for RWC 2023 in three or four years time, will Aguiar have got back into the REC having built an established core to his team through his talented upcoming generation of Portugal most successful ever U20s along with added experience from professional players in France? Or will there still be this revolving door of young players who come in for 5 caps and Portugal still be known as the nation with by far the worst senior side in relation to their juniors?

They have the well trained youth talent, but it is the high performance programs and professionalism that appear to be lacking. There has been talk recently of adding professionalism to the setup and possibly contracting players following possibly similar to how Uruguay have done (good news), and increasing focus on 7s (not such good news and from a 15s standpoint simply a waste of resources).