The Luxembourg national rugby team lost a closely fought game 31-24 to Latvia in Jelgava on Saturday.
The team is competing in the Rugby Europe Conference for the first time and, as expected, found the step up in level to be extremely challenging. Luxembourg suffers from having an extremely small player base and went into Saturday's match with 10 players missing through injury.
The entertaining 80 minutes that followed was due to some excellent fighting spirit shown by the Luxembourgish side, who physically were always going to struggle against a far bigger and heavier home team. The Latvians used this physical advantage to advance slowly down the field and mount sustained pressure on Luxembourg's try line. Despite a concerted defensive effort, any small mistake was capitalised on, and the Baltic side scored two twice through close range driving play close to the ruck.
The fact that Latvia did not run away with the game by half time was due to two well-taken tries by prop Saman Rezapour and flanker Jean-Baptiste Vert. Rezapour, the captain of the side, was unfortunately forced off with a leg injury, and only a strong performance from Thomas Kremer - who moved up to the front row to replace him - prevented Latvia from simply overpowering the far smaller Luxembourg scrum.
These scores kept Luxembourg in the match and although Latvia scored again early in the second half, Luxembourg hit once back once more with an impressive try from a driving maul, with the heavy Latvian side looking visibly shaken. Scrum-half Will Dennis also dived over in the corner and, with Latvia clinging to a 2 point lead, the momentum appeared to be turning.
Unfortunately for the visitors however, Latvia capitalised on another Luxembourg error and were able to clear their lines, and finish off a well-taken try of their own. Although the conversion was missed leaving Luxembourg with a chance to draw level with one more score, the Latvians were clinical enough to hold on for the victory.
Luxembourg do leave with a bonus point (for losing the match by less than eight points) but must face Sweden on 5 November at Stade Josy Barthel in what will be an extremely important match in the competition.
Final score: Latvia 31 Luxembourg 24
