Quite amazing to think that you could get 10,000 to watch Portugal play Romania!
Rugby is certainly on the boom in mainland Europe.

Newlook Romania maintain upward spiral

(IRB.COM) Monday 3 December 2007

Romania have leap-frogged Eastern European rivals Georgia in the latest World Rankings after their hard-fought 23-8 win over Portugal in Lisbon.

The win in the European Nations Cup takes the Romanians to 15 in the world, ahead of Georgia in 16th place and is a second successive win over the Portuguese after their 14-10 victory over Tomaz Morais' side in the Rugby World Cup.

World Champions South Africa's loss against a fine Barbarians performance at Twickenham did not affect their world number one status because the Barabarians are not affiliated to a single full member union of the IRB and so are not counted in the rankings engine.

Romanian renaissance

The rise up the rankings can be seen as just reward for a brave re-think brought about by the Romanian union in the wake of the World Cup.

An all-Romanian coaching set-up was installed under Marin Mot and has so far shown faith in home-based players rather than calling on the army of professionals based predominantly in France.

Only one of their World Cup players - centre Csaba Gal - was named against Portugal in a side that boasted four debutants - Marcel Mihalache and Radu Basalau in the front row, lock forward Marcel Coste and Gheorghita Bigiu on the wing - and the victory in front of 10,000 fans at Lisbon's Estadio Nacional shows further improvement on their gutsy 22-12 loss to an improving Russian side last month.