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This could turn out to be a really bad week for all things Portuguese

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Betting experts Chicken Dinner preview Portugal's clash with Romania

Romania vs Portugal, Rugby World Cup, Tuesday September 25, Pool C, Toulouse
Portugal +26.5 points

Current IRB rankings as of September 24: Romania 15, Portugal 22

Things aren't going too well for Portuguese sport of late. The 'Special One' has been unceremoniously ushered into the street at Chelsea, their national football coach, 'Big Phil' Scolari has been fined for jabbing a Serbian player in the face, and the national rugby team's self-esteem must be in need of major psychological repair after the 108-13 mauling by the Kiwis in their last match.

This game provides a chance for one of the teams to restore some pride and leave the tournament with memories of something other than defeat. Romania have managed to secure a win in every previous World Cup bar one and have yet to do so in RWC 2007, while World Cup newcomers Portugal have never won a game in the World Cup, making the near inevitable outcome an addition to Portugal's month of sporting woe.

To further complicate Portugal's predicament, small teams, especially newcomers, are less equipped to deal with the demands of such a tournament and tend to perform worse in their later games. Romania, in contrast, are seasoned World Cup veterans. Their narrow 24-17 loss to Italy in their opening 2007 game bodes well for them covering the 26.5 point handicap as Italy went on to beat Portugal 31-5 at a canter, and Italy's dominance wasn't reflected in the winning margin. Romania have also been handing out some multi-try spankings to smaller fry in the space between World Cups, including a 46-13 win against the Czech Republic and a 50-14 trampling of Spain, both in March this year. (You can get Portugal +26.5 points on betfair at 1.44, Romania -26.5 points on betfair at 2.62.)

The first time these two sides met in the late 1960s Romania won by 40 points - making the handicap offered here look more than generous. However, only English football fans pay credence to something that happened 40 years ago, and Portugal are a much more competitive outfit these days, bringing some of their impressive sevens form onto the International scene.

Since the last World Cup against non-Tri/Six Nations teams ranked above them, two characteristics of Portugal's games have been low scores and tight results. Eleven of 21 such games have been won or lost by a single figure margin, and two were drawn. Only three were lost by more than 26.5 points (to Georgia 40-0 in March 2006, to Uruguay 30-3 in 2004 and to Romania 36-6 in 2004.) Those three games were also the only instances in which second tier opposition scored more than 26.5 points against Portugal, although most of those games were against weaker teams than Romania. In their three encounters with Romania since the last World Cup, Portugal have lost all three, but only one by the 26.5 point handicap available here (36-6 in 2004.) They also won 14-10 in 2005 and 27-3 last year.

If Portugal somehow manage to defy the odds and defeat Romania - and they have beaten Romania once before, 16-15 in 2003 - they would also rocket up the IRB rankings and overtake them. So if you're on some sort of personal quest to find at least one underdog to bet on outright, and you missed Tonga and Argentina, then such is the enormity of the remaining mismatches that this could be about as close as you'll get in what remains of the pool games.