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Pro D2 top try scorer among 8 uncapped players in 42-man Portugal squad

Portugal Rugby squad stands on the field during Rugby Europe Championship match between Georgia and Portugal at Stade Jean Bouin on March 17, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by Antonio Borga/Eurasia Sport Images/Getty Images)

Simon Mannix’s Portugal will head into the Autumn Nations Series with a couple of new additions, as CA Brive’s and Pro D2’s top try scorer, Lucas da Silva, is expected to make his debut for the Lobos.

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After years of rumours, the hooker will finally have a chance to break onto the international scene, building upon his impressive season start.

Da Silva’s contract with Brive will be up come June 2025, and with Stade Français, USA Perpignan and Provence lining up to place a bid, the possibility of playing for Portugal might raise his value amongst the Top 14 clubs.

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The Autumn Nations Series will also mark scrum-half Samuel Marques’ return to Test match action, after missing out on the 2024 Men’s Rugby Europe Championship and July tour to Africa. The AS Béziers-Hérault star has already amassed a total of 99 points in this year’s Pro D2 and will feature in the game against Scotland.

Trailblazers Simão Bento and Raffaele Storti will feature in both tests, with the former recovering from an injury that kept him out since early September. Bento scored two tries in Stade Montois’s loss against Provence in last weekend’s round of the Pro D2.

Fixture
Internationals
Portugal
17 - 21
Full-time
USA
All Stats and Data

Francisco Fernandes (AS Béziers-Hérault, prop), Joris Moura (Valence Romans, fullback) and Rodrigo Marta (Colomiers, utility back) are the biggest absences in the squad, and won’t feature in any of the Tests. Marta played a key role for Portugal in the last four years but has sustained an injury and will be out for the next five weeks.

Simon Mannix, who has been in charge of the Portuguese national team since May, was able to pick a star-studded squad and has in his sights on a potential win against the Eagles.

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Portugal will first host the USA in Coimbra on November 9, before travelling to Scotland to face Gregor Townsend’s side at Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium on the 16th, twenty-six years after their first game against the Scots.

Portugal squad
Forwards
David Costa
Abel Da Cunha
Diogo Hasse Ferreira
António Machado Santos
Márcio Pinheiro – uncapped
António Prim
Cody Thomas
Luka Begic
Lucas Da Silva – uncapped
Santiago Lopes – uncapped
Pedro Vicente
Martim Belo
Steevy Cerqueira
António Rebelo de Andrade
José Rebelo de Andrade
Duarte Torgal
Vasco Baptista
Frederico Couto
André Cunha
João Granate
José Madeira
Nicolas Martins
Diego Pinheiro Ruiz

Backs
Hugo Camacho
António Campos – uncapped
Enzo Lopes – uncapped
Pedro Lucas
Samuel Marques
Hugo Aubry
Domingos Cabral
Manuel Vareiro
Tomás Appleton
Gabriel Aviragnet – uncapped
Vasco Leite – uncapped
José Lima
Fábio Conceição
Lucas Martins
José Paiva Dos Santos
Sebastião Stilwell – uncapped
Raffaele Storti
Simão Bento
Manuel Cardoso Pinto

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J
JW 1 hour ago
'Passionate reunion of France and New Zealand shows Fabien Galthie is wrong to rest his stars'

Ok, managed to read the full article..

... New Zealand’s has only 14 and the professional season is all over within four months. In France, club governance is the responsibility of an independent organisation [the Ligue Nationale de Rugby or LNR] which is entirely separate from the host union [the Fédération Française de Rugby or FFR]. Down south New Zealand Rugby runs the provincial and the national game.

That is the National Provincial Championship, a competition of 14 representative union based teams run through the SH international window and only semi professional (paid only during it's running). It is run by NZR and goes for two and a half months.


Super Rugby is a competition involving 12 fully professional teams, of which 5 are of New Zealand eligibility, and another joint administered team of Pacific Island eligibility, with NZR involvement. It was a 18 week competition this year, so involved (randomly chosen I believe) extra return fixtures (2 or 3 home and away derbys), and is run by Super Rugby Pacific's own independent Board (or organisation). The teams may or may not be independently run and owned (note, this does not necessarily mean what you think of as 'privately owned').


LNR was setup by FFR and the French Government to administer the professional game in France. In New Zealand, the Players Association and Super Rugby franchises agreed last month to not setup their own governance structure for professional rugby and re-aligned themselves with New Zealand Rugby. They had been proposing to do something like the English model, I'm not sure how closely that would have been aligned to the French system but it did not sound like it would have French union executive representation on it like the LNR does.

In the shaky isles the professional pyramid tapers to a point with the almighty All Blacks. In France the feeling for country is no more important than the sense of fierce local identity spawned at myriad clubs concentrated in the southwest. Progress is achieved by a nonchalant shrug and the wide sweep of nuanced negotiation, rather than driven from the top by a single intense focus.

Yes, it is pretty much a 'representative' selection system at every level, but these union's are having to fight for their existence against the regime that is NZR, and are currently going through their own battle, just as France has recently as I understand it. A single focus, ala the French game, might not be the best outcome for rugby as a whole.


For pure theatre, it is a wonderful article so far. I prefer 'Ntamack New Zealand 2022' though.

The young Crusader still struggles to solve the puzzle posed by the shorter, more compact tight-heads at this level but he had no problem at all with Colombe.

It was interesting to listen to Manny during an interview on Maul or Nothing, he citied that after a bit of banter with the All Black's he no longer wanted one of their jersey's after the game. One of those talks was an eye to eye chat with Tamaiti Williams, there appear to be nothing between the lock and prop, just a lot of give and take. I thought TW angled in and caused Taylor to pop a few times, and that NZ were lucky to be rewarded.

f you have a forward of 6ft 8ins and 145kg, and he is not at all disturbed by a dysfunctional set-piece, you are in business.

He talked about the clarity of the leadership that helped alleviate any need for anxiety at the predicaments unfolding before him. The same cannot be said for New Zealand when they had 5 minutes left to retrieve a match winning penalty, I don't believe. Did the team in black have much of a plan at any point in the game? I don't really call an autonomous 10 vehicle they had as innovative. I think Razor needs to go back to the dealer and get a new game driver on that one.

Vaa’i is no match for his power on the ground. Even in reverse, Meafou is like a tractor motoring backwards in low gear, trampling all in its path.

Vaa'i actually stops him in his tracks. He gets what could have been a dubious 'tackle' on him?

A high-level offence will often try to identify and exploit big forwards who can be slower to reload, and therefore vulnerable to two quick plays run at them consecutively.

Yes he was just standing on his haunches wasn't he? He mentioned that in the interview, saying that not only did you just get up and back into the line to find the opposition was already set and running at you they also hit harder than anything he'd experienced in the Top 14. He was referring to New Zealands ultra-physical, burst-based Super style of course, which he was more than a bit surprised about. I don't blame him for being caught out.


He still sent the obstruction back to the repair yard though!

What wouldn’t the New Zealand rugby public give to see the likes of Mauvaka and Meafou up front..

Common now Nick, don't go there! Meafou showed his Toulouse shirt and promptly got his citizenship, New Zealand can't have him, surely?!?


As I have said before with these subjects, really enjoy your enthusiasm for their contribution on the field and I'd love to see more of their shapes running out for Vern Cotter and the like styled teams.

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