All the pressure's on us - Cockerill

EDDIE Jones has coached three national teams, South Africa have won two World Cups and Britain has had four Prime Ministers since Georgia last lost a game in the Rugby Europe Championship.

- JON NEWCOMBE

That is the size of the task that confronts Portugal in Paris tonight as they prepare to take on the sixtime defending champions, whose last defeat came at the hands of Romania in March 2017.

Portugal were outplayed in the 2023 final, losing 3811. However, since then they have become "the darlings" of world rugby with their performances at the World Cup, which included a win against Fiji and an 18-18 draw against Georgia.

Portugal came a cropper against unfancied Belgium in their first game of the Rugby Europe Championship but since then they have got back into their running stride and have been every bit as attractive to watch as they were five months ago.

It's a scenario almost tailor-made for Georgia head coach Richard Cockerill, whose Leicester side, as a player and as a coach, loved nothing more than reminding the opposition who's boss.

Georgia have strung together an unbeaten 32-match run and Cockerill, 53, now four matches into his reign, admits the pressure is all on them.

"There is pressure on us to win; everybody expects us to win so we have to make sure we get that right," he said. "The last three times we have played Portugal we have won one and drawn two. They were the darlings of the World Cup having beaten Fiji and they should have probably beaten ourselves, so we've got a fair bit to prove.

"We'll be well prepared and we are certainly well motivated as a group. We have shown some really good parts of play and I am hoping we can bring all that together and put in a compete performance.

"We know if we don't play as well as we can they are a good enough team to beat us. They are very dangerous with the unstructured way they play."