Brazil

When the British & Irish Lions came to Brazil in the 1930s, it should have kickstarted rugby in the Portuguese-speaking nation. Instead, the Second World War broke out and they’ve been playing catch up ever since.

With a population of more than two hundred million, the world’s fifth largest country, fuelled by three national divisions of rugby club and with inspiration coming not only from neighbours Argentina, but also fellow South Americans Chile and Uruguay – surely, Brazil are rugby’s next big thing? 

That the Rugby World Cup is expanding to 24 teams also makes it the perfect time to step out of the rugby shadows, but it’s a far from simple task, as they’re finding in both the men’s and women’s game.

The Brazilian Tupis, the men’s national team, lost with relative ease in November to USA [3-48] and prospective World Cup qualifiers Canada [15-40]. In July, the Brazilian Yaras, the female national team, failed to beat Colombia, losing 19-30.  The result meant their South America rivals went to the inaugural WXV, finishing fourth in the third tier. There’s clearly work to do,

Making it to the next Rugby World Cups – 2025 in England for the women and 2027 in Australia for the men – is a goal, but not one that will stop the growth of the game if it’s not achieved.

Brazil has been a work in progress for some time, with history books suggesting the game was first played here in the early 1870s, arriving as it did throughout the world via enthusiastic students returning home from higher education in the United Kingdom.

The first documented club was Club Brasileiro de Rugby Futbol, founded in September 1891 in Rio de Janeiro. “What was interesting about that first club was that many of the original members had Brazilian surnames,” says Virgilio Franceschi Neto, a former player and national team manager, suggesting there had been an early interest from locals and not solely expats.

But the man given credit for transforming Brazilian sport was Charles Miller, born in Sao Paulo to a Scottish railway engineer and a Brazilian mother. Sent to school in Southampton, he not only brought back a football – which would help spark a nation into becoming the spiritual home of the sport – but also a rugby ball. “He loved football,” says Virgilio, “and he devoted his life to the game. Rugby was mostly an expat game, with three main clubs: SPAC and Rio Cricket, who still play rugby, and Santos Athletic Club.”

Rugby was something of a slow burner, with games being played between local sides and the crews of visiting ships that docked either at the ports of Rio de Janeiro or Santos (about 100 miles from Sao Paulo).

Sometimes, the ships brought quality too, such as in 1936, when the British & Irish Lions visited South America and, en route to Buenos Aires where they would play nine games, they stopped in Santos to play what was Brazil’s first real international, a game that will always be remembered for Prince Alexander Obolensky’s exploits.

Months before scoring two tries against the All Blacks at Twickenham, he scored all seventeen tries in an 83-0 demolition of the home side. But any momentum gained, even in defeat, was lost due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control. “The Second World War meant that many expats and players of British descent enlisted and the [playing] numbers were very low,” recalls Virgilio. 

“A rebirth came in the 1950s with the French, Japanese and Argentine communities embracing the game through their clubs – Lycee Pasteur, Nippon Club and Alphaville Tennis Club respectively. They tried to develop rugby in the Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro corridor.”

It would take decades before any real attempts to resuscitate the sport took place. In the 1980s Escuela Aeroespacial de Sao José dos Campos, “showed how the game could develop outside of the so-called rugby hotbeds,” says Virgilio. “The Sao José dos Campos Rugby Club has since become the winning-most team in the country and responsible for taking the game to every social level.”

Virgilio’s own love-affair with the game merits a mention. His father, an agricultural engineer from Jau, a city of one hundred thousand inhabitants some three hundred kilometres west of Sao Paulo, visited Australia and came home with a number of rugby VHS tapes the family would devour. Playing the game wasn’t an option for him growing up, so Virgilio had to wait until university many years later to get started. “Today,” he says with pride, “Jau now has rugby. The game became a family issue, my brother played until he was 35, I was national team’s manager and have covered the game extensively. I convinced my closest friends to take up rugby.”

Although not a game easily found in every part of the country, it certainly has a bigger profile these days, the internet furthering its circulation around Brazil. “So did cable TV,” says Virgilio. “It allowed fans and future players to have more information, to have more rugby footage available in more regions of the country.”

The first Rugby World Cup that was broadcast in Brazil was Australia in 2003, with France 2007 making a huge dent in the sporting psyche of many locals. “Rugby was in a bad shape fifteen years ago when a strong development movement started,” explains Virgilio. “In these fifteen years there have been good and not so good moments, but they have all been good as they were necessary steps. The national fifteens team was being developed, and the women had a very solid and successful sevens structure with a clear pathway.”

It was when the national team needed to find funding to attend a South American championship that one of Brazil’s best-ever players, Fernando Portugal, asked for help. “He went to Fernando Mufarej [a local businessman],” remembers Martín Jaco, the president of Brazil Rugby, or the Confederaçao Brasilera de Rugby (CBRu), since 2021. A group of around ten very successful individuals came to the rescue, led by lawyers Sami Arap and Werner Grau together with Mufarej and Martín. They mapped out a plan for growth. “Brazil is a very big country with a lack of resources, more so for a sport which is not culturally known,” Martín says of the initial difficulties faced. “When we created the CBRu, our governance structure was made transparent, so much so that we are constantly recognised for this in the sporting environment.” 

This recognition comes from the Brazilian Olympic Committee and an NGO, the Sou do Esporte Institute, that has awarded the Confederation prizes in the last seven years for their governance and transparency. “This was our first strategy, to be transparent, modern and be recognised by our values,” continues Martín. “We knew that our sporting success wouldn’t bring sponsors early on.”

They focused on the grassroots, to develop clubs, tournaments and a community at the foundations of the sport, while also looking at the elite level. “We focused on our high performance [pathway] at the request of World Rugby and Sudamérica Rugby – the regional association – who wanted us to develop at the highest level,” says Martín.

Results soon began to improve. Brazil recorded a win against Paraguay in Asunción in 2008, which was swiftly followed in 2009 by the news that rugby had been confirmed for the Rio Olympics in 2016. Brazil could compete at sevens, certainly in the women’s game, with the national side already leaders in the region – they have won every South American Championship they played in since its inception in 2004. So, with both teams taking part in the Rio Games, rugby took centre stage.

Overseas coaches began to fly in too, including the now All Blacks coach Scott Robertson who arrived to coach Brazil in 2012 as part of a partnership with the confederation. Another Cantabrian would also become a key part of the Brazilian machinery: Josh Reeves. Born in Christchurch, he was playing club rugby for Wanderers FC in Ireland when he met future wife, Ana, who is Brazilian. They moved to her homeland ten years ago. “Around the same time as the Crusaders landed in Brazil,” he explains (New Zealand’s Crusaders sent some of their personnel to work in the country, to help develop their high-performance programme). “I played for a second division social side, then I changed clubs and soon moved to Sao Jose dos Campos to join the sevens programme.” Unable to play in the Olympics, he made an impact in fifteens, making his Test debut under coach Rodolfo Ambrosio in 2017 and going on to win thirty caps and score 180 points.

Today, Josh is Brazil’s director of rugby. “When I decided to move to Brazil, I wasn’t thinking too much about playing, more about coaching,” he says. “It was Rodolfo who convinced me; the idea of playing at the highest level was enticing. I always wanted to be a pro, live the life of a pro, 24/7.

“At that stage, it was a surprise and a dream come true, easily the best thing in my life because I thought that my opportunity had passed.”

A year after his debut against Chile, Josh was an integral part of the team that won the South American Championship, a unique feat, beating an Argentine XV in the process. “The road taken was proving successful as we beat Canada, USA, Paraguay, Chile,” says Martín, picking up the story. 

However, their momentum was halted in 2020. The national team were playing the annual Americas Rugby Championship, and the Corinthians, the Brazilian franchise side, had become one of seven founding members of the Superliga Americana de Rugby. But only three games were played. The Corinthians were about to play in Paraguay when the Covid pandemic forced them to fly back home. “There was success thanks to the support of World Rugby and Sudamérica Rugby, but then came Covid and our programme was no longer sustainable. Our national teams were doing well but our clubs weren’t.”

As Covid faded, new goals emerged. “From 2021, post pandemic, we put the focus on growing the base,” says Martín. “That will give us more players, fans, families which will, in turn, also feed our HP [high performance programme]. 

“What we want is more players playing more tournaments, better organised and more competitive, run by Brazil Rugby with more structure and support,” he adds. 

Infrastructure, or the lack of it, remains a problem across the board in Brazilian club rugby. To solve it, they have the SESI Project – half public, half private enterprise created to provide sporting infrastructure and develop clear philosophies for sport-loving boys and girls. SESI are schools founded by the Industrial Federation – a national union of industries – scattered all around the country. “They believe that sport makes better students as it teaches discipline,” explains Martín. “So far, we have done a deal with eight SESIs in the Sao Paulo region; we pair each SESI with an existing neighbouring rugby club, which are then supported with coaches, PE teachers, infrastructure and competition. SESI can offer rugby and clubs will, in turn, have a bigger player pool.”

At the time of writing, 1,500 schoolchildren were playing rugby in just eight SESIs. “They create pathways for professional development, with players already training four times a week,” says Martín. “Our ambition is for this to be a national project, we’re working with a club in every state.”

As Josh sees it, “In the next five to six years we’ll start producing players that come from a good infrastructure.”

All this growth, and the ultimate goal of having both national teams playing at their Rugby World Cup, requires vision, hunger and financial support. “Our budget is between three and four million dollars,” explains Martín. “We receive funding from World Rugby, the Olympic Committee, a tax incentive law that allows companies to donate taxes to sports, which in turn forces us to be transparent, and sponsors. We are well organised and are the sports federation with the largest number of sponsors, although not the one earning the most money.

“They join us because of our history, our plan, our transparency and the work we put in to ensure we continue to grow.”

Brazil, the sleeping giant, offers a market that is extremely enticing to World Rugby. In the recent Rugby World Cup, no country had even half the population of Brazil. The time to push is now.

Baby Futuro Mulbahuer is definitely a future World Rugby Hall of Famer. At sixteen, she played in the first South American Sevens tournament and at 37 she continues to play for Niteroi, her local club.

She works for Brazil Rugby and is a member of the local Olympic committee’s Athletes’ Commission. “We are on a very good pathway, with the under-17s playing for the first time as an age grade,” explains Baby.

In a country where sevens has long ruled the women’s game, they have begun to embrace fifteens. “Nine regions have teams, which allows us to have regional and national tournaments,” she explains. The national league is the BR XV. There is regional club rugby too, but, as it stands, the only formal competition is in São Paulo.

Colombia comfortably beat Brazil 30-19 the last time they played, setting the standard. “We still don’t have the depth as we are still developing, but we want to go to the Rugby World Cup. It is very important that Colombia helps us to understand where we are, in order to better understand what we need to do at the highest level. We have to work hard within domestic rugby.”

There is always the risk that with fifteens developing, sevens could suffer. “Sevens is our main product at the highest level,” says Baby, “but I believe that fifteens won’t depend on sevens.”

Bringing in more talent to increase the player pools of both forms of the game can only be a good thing; one that will benefit new head coach – of the men and women – Emiliano Caffera. The former Uruguay player and coach, who was Chile’s defence coach at the 2023 World Cup in France, he joined Brazil in time for November’s La Vila International Rugby Cup in Spain. They faced both the hosts and Canada, suffering two big defeats, although there were glimpses of hope, with the number of participating teams for both Rugby World Cups set to increase. “Once the qualifying processes are decided, we will decide on the pathway,” says Emiliano. “The goal is to increase the base level in both the male and female high-performance areas.”

“We are now at a solid place, ready to push,” agrees Josh. “We had a tough period over a couple of years, developing young coaches and young players. It is starting to build more momentum towards building an international team that can compete against good international sides – Chile and Uruguay, Spain, Portugal, USA and Canada – and push for Rugby World Cup places.

“This is a central goal now,” he continues. “We are going to push ourselves closer to Chile and Uruguay. It opens opportunities for us, but it won’t be easy as many teams will look for the same.

“I believe we have the individuals to achieve this goal – it is about pushing together.”

The players are on board, and the arrival of Emiliano, with a CV that includes helping two different South American teams making it to the biggest stage, will only help. “Brazil is a country that produces international level talent, whether that be [in terms of] speed, size, physicality, skill,” reckons Josh. “In rugby terms, there is great grassroots set-up at the moment. There is a lot of good work in the age-grades but in the next three, four years, we will see growth.”

This growth will be underpinned by “an army of volunteers,” says Martín. “At board level, we donate time and money, but there are many that work hard for the growth of Brazilian rugby. 

“Results won’t bring things down,” he insists. “We first focused on HP, then we moved back to the base of the pyramid and now we are back on HP. The next two Rugby World Cups, in 2025 and 2027, require that we work hard to fight for those places.

“If we grow, we could become a market for players and coaches, an important market for World Rugby. This growth would allow us to find more sponsors and continue to push other teams.” 

With around ten thousand players across 150 clubs in Brazil, if a giant is in fact emerging, it’s going to take time. “We need time to develop,” insists Martín. “The mountain is high and we won’t beat the All Blacks tomorrow – that might never happen – but we must work to ensure we get closer with time. We need to play more.”

There are plenty of smaller wins to celebrate along the way. “The sense of satisfaction comes when you find out that more teams are now playing in our sevens tournament,” he says, “and that the final of our Super 12 (the club’s top division) was a great day of rugby, with fans, colour, enjoyment and a great game.

“It is when you see the national teams growing, when players from the social projects go off to represent their country as rugby internationals overseas – all of that is what gives us satisfaction. A slow job, but satisfactory.”

Story by Frankie Deges

Pictures by  Susi Baxter-Seitz

This extract was taken from issue 24 of Rugby.
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