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Uva looking ahead already

Vasco Uva: Leader of the survivors

Portugal captain Vasco Uva was pleased with the opening twenty-five minutes from his side in their 108-13 defeat to New Zealand on Saturday.

Having only trailed by twelve points after twenty minutes Uva was not too concerned that his side went on to lose by such a large margin, and has said they are already focusing on their next game, against Italy.

"We are very happy, but now we are thinking about the next game against Italy," Uva told Sportal.

"Italy plays against the All Blacks and teams like this all the time. We play against Romania and Georgia which are two different worlds."

Uva couldn't stress enough how happy he was with his side's efforts, and for scoring a try against the world's top ranked side.

"That particular play we knew we had a chance. We work hard as a team and to achieve that was fantastic for us," he said with a huge smile on his face.

"All of the All Blacks are very good players. The back three are the best in the world, we wanted to keep the ball so they couldn't score. We knew if we kicked they would score tries.

"I think it was a harder game than we expected. But we left the field cheered by everybody. At the end the public answer was yes. We were well received and it wasn't as bad as it could have been in terms of losing the world record."

Having seen Italy snub the Haka in the opening Pool C game, Uva said it was a special moment for the Portuguese to face such a historic part of rugby.

"We know that the Haka is one of the most frightening things in the whole of rugby. We prepared all week, we faced it, gave it the respect it deserved and it gave us motivation and we knew if it gave them strength, it was also a point of strength for us," he concluded.