The Portugal national rugby union team is a third tier rugby union side representing Portugal. They first played in 1935 and now compete in the European Nations Cup. Rugby union in Portugal is administered by the Federação Portuguesa de Rugby. Portugal qualified for their first Rugby World Cup in 2007. Portugal was in Pool C along with New Zealand, Italy, Romania and Scotland. They are nicknamed Os Lobos, Portuguese for "The Wolves".
Portugal have experienced unprecedented success in recent years. They were surprise winners of the 2003–04 European Nations Cup and have continued to record impressive results, although they could only finish third in the 2005–06 event. The IRB Sevens World Series circuit has allowed the Portuguese players to demonstrate their competence to the wider rugby world. In 2006–07 Portugal competed at every IRB sevens event for the first time.
Read more about Portugal National Rugby Union Team: Overall, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words national, union and/or team:
“Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching. Our splendid physique as a people is entirely due to our national stupidity.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Visitors who come from the Soviet Union and tell you how marvellous it is to be able to look at public buildings without advertisements stuck all over them are just telling you that they can’t decipher the cyrillic alphabet.”
—Clive James (b. 1939)
“I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)