A historic first World Cup win for Portugal, a place in the quarter-finals for Fiji where they will face England and elimination for Eddie Jones’s Australia. But that barely tells the half of it. The final match of the pool stages proved by some distance the most entertaining with Rodrigo Marta’s late try and Samuel Marques’s nerveless conversion handing Portugal the most dramatic of victories.
Os Lobos have won hearts and minds throughout the tournament and now they have a victory to savour. The sight of their players singing their lungs out in front of their delirious supporters soon after the final whistle will be one of the abiding memories of the tournament. That and the expert touch-finder from the hooker Mike Tadjer, under considerable pressure, in the first half.
