Czechia entered the fray in the Rugby Europe Men’s Trophy for 2025/26 with a bang at the weekend as they secured a win in their opening match. Meanwhile, Poland were also on form to make it two wins from two for them in the competition so far.
Czechia finished third in the six-team event last season and were on their travels to Croatia on Saturday to get their new campaign going.
Croatia had won one and lost one going into this game and it really was an end-to-end 80 minutes with 88 points scored in total with the visitors eventually winning 55-33.
Czechia got off to a flying start and were 17-0 up after 17 minutes thanks to two converted tries and a penalty, but then Croatia found some rhythm.
With a couple of minutes to go until half-time they had closed the gap to 20-14 and then the hosts made sure they were leading at the interval when winger Luka Proloscic scored a try which was converted by full-back Nikola Pavlovic to make it 21-20.
Czechia were clearly annoyed at losing the lead because almost straight after the restart they scored a converted try via winger Adam Miracky and then, when Croatia had a man yellow carded, they took full advantage.
When the hosts were down to 14, Czechia were ruthless and ran in three converted tries to suddenly have a very comfortable 48-21 lead.
That was after 53 minutes and Croatia were shellshocked. In the end it finished 55-33 to the visitors.
Maja Prgomet
Czechia are now on four points and third in the standings while Poland have 10 points from 10 and are second after backing up their 41-8 bonus point away win in Lithuania last month with a 47-6 bonus point home triumph over Denmark on Saturday.
Back-row Michal Mirosz, stand-off Jedrzej Nowicki and back-row Bercho Botha scored converted tries in the first half to a penalty from Danish stand-off Benjamin Wiggins to make it 21-3 at the break.
Second-row Krystian Olejek, full-back Kacper Wrobel, sub Dawid Plichta and No.8 Vaha Halaifonua scored the second half tries for Poland, Wiggins kicked another penalty for Denmark and there was a yellow card apiece handed out to both sides late on as the home side won 47-6.
There were also two games in the Rugby Europe Men’s Conference on Saturday.
Austria are top of Pool B with 10 points from 10 after a convincing 62-3 bonus point win away to Slovakia. In that game, the visitors led 20-0 at the interval and then cranked things up a notch further in the second period.
HPA
And Andorra got their Pool D campaign up and running with a 21-10 home win over Israel.
By Gary Heatly
