'We want to shock the world every time we step onto the pitch'

The Springboks have been the icons that shaped and influenced Portugal’s rugby players for decades and to face them in Bloemfontein on Saturday is massive - writes Annemie Bester.

That is the view of their inspirational captain Tomas Appleton, the rugby-playing dentist who starred for Portugal as they captivated audiences at the World Cup last year.

The Wolves not only played an entertaining brand of rugby at the tournament but got results too. They pushed Wales hard and drew with Georgia.

In their last pool game, they managed to outwit Fiji in the last moments of the game. They were the darling of the World Cup thanks to their daring, attacking brand of rugby. They were the second favourite team of most fans given their underdog status and the fact that they were particularly enjoyable to watch.

Rugby365 sat down with Appleton at their team hotel in Bloemfontein on Wednesday to get some insight into the psyche of a semi-professional rugby player who knows he will run out against the No. 1 team in the world on Saturday.

“It’s massive, playing against double World Champions,” Appleton said, speaking in near-perfect English. “It’s so big for us as a developing union. For some of us players, we are playing against guys that we are used to seeing on the television.

“They are the guys that influence our game style and the way we want to play.

“You don’t want to put them on a pedestal, as we are conscious that we want to show the world that we are taking this very seriously.

“And we want to shock the world every time we step onto the pitch.

“We want to shock the world. Of course, I am not saying that we will beat them,” Appleton said earnestly.

The win over Fiji has been mentioned countless times in the build-up to this one-off Test this week. Not by the Portuguese, but by every Springbok, including coach Rassie Erasmus, during every press conference this week. We asked the captain how that moment felt.

“It was the best feeling in the world to beat Fiji.

“No one expected it. Fiji was beating Australia, and Fiji almost qualified for the finals of the World Cup.

“We won in the last minute of the game.

“We were underdogs in every game and when Wales struggled to get a bonus point against us, I think people started to understand that we could compete, even though we were the last team to qualify for the World Cup. \

“People probably thought we would get smashed in every game but that didn’t happen. And the rugby we played was quite attractive. Patrice, our coach, taught us French flair.”

The 30-year-old centre still has ambitions to go to the next World Cup in 2027 and to become a centurion.

He has 74 caps as a player and 34 as captain. At the last game of the Rugby European Championship that Portugal competes in, he became the most capped captain in Portugal’s history.

“In four years I want to be present at the next World Cup.

“My wife won’t be happy if I say I want to play four more years after that,” he chuckles.

His working life is divided between rugby, his dental clinic, medical studies, his wife, and his three-year-old daughter. According to him the only way he could manage his life is through the discipline rugby instilled in him. The captain has only generous words for the man who orchestrated their World Cup glory – the Frenchman Patrica Lageusqet.

“I have to give full credit to our previous coach Patrice Laguesqet who was our coach since 2019. He changed the views and the culture of the Portuguese national team completely when he arrived.

“The win against Fiji was the result of a four-year process. We started as a team in 2019 and we lost against Brazil. And on his last game, we were winning against Fiji, which was number eight on the world rankings.

“It was a big process. The potential in Portugal is huge but we have a lot of things to work on,” he explains.

Twelve of the players in South Africa to face the Boks were at last year’s World Cup.

Some of the players from that squad could not maintain the challenges of work and rugby, Appleton says.

“All the players playing in France are professional and of the players playing in Portugal, there is only one who is fully professional. Apart from that we all have different jobs, for example, one is a designer, one works in insurance, and I am a dentist.

“At that time I was fully focused on rugby and I must be honest, our performance was influenced by that for sure. Everything was focused on being at your best level. Of course, the World Cup was a historical thing and it was one of the biggest shocks in Portuguese sports history.

“The amount of sacrifices you have to make is huge, and some players could not maintain that. If you ask someone to sacrifice everything for four years, but it’s different if you ask them to sacrifice throughout your whole career.

“Then our next goal is another World Cup. We’ve already done it, so it might not be as difficult for some other players,” he shrugged.