THE DREAM had slipped away. Against their Iberian rivals, the Portuguese team were outplayed. In front of an ecstatic Madrid crowd, Os Lobos (The Wolves) saw their ticket to Rugby World Cup 2023 in France ripped up before their very eyes.
In the aftermath, head coach Patrice Lagisquet felt the need to apologise to his charges. With the ultimate prize on the line, the former France wing, known to many as the ‘Bayonne Express’, felt he hadn’t offered the right energy to his players in the build-up. A dear friend of his had passed away suddenly the week before and Lagisquet felt utterly battered by it.
The one-time assistant also had a head full of ‘what ifs’ and ‘if onlys’ about the other games Portugal played in the Rugby Europe Championship competition that doubled as World Cup spot deciders. A forfeited Russian fixture only gave them four points rather than five, sure. But if he’d just thought about the bigger picture and
