A record victory over nearest challengers Romania in front of a 55,000-strong crowd at the Dinamo Arena in Tbilisi was the perfect way for Georgia to sign off yet another European Nations Cup title-winning campaign.

Continuing the momentum from their historic third-place Pool C finish at Rugby World Cup 2015, Georgia swept to a 38-9 victory against the Oaks to stretch their unbeaten run in Europe’s second tier competition to 31 games, dating back to March 2010.

Over the last decade they have only lost just three Division 1A games and they are now ranked as one of the world’s top 12 teams.

Calls for the Lelos to be included in the Six Nations have grown ever louder as a result, and coach Milton Haig is firmly of the belief that stronger competition is needed if his side are to continue their upward momentum.

For the first time in their history, Georgia will travel to the Pacific Islands in June –as part of an enhanced tier two playing programme announced by World Rugby –to play in tests against the higher-ranked Fiji as well as Samoa and Tonga.

“Ideally we want to be playing in a competition like the Six Nations. We are a northern hemisphere team, we are based in Europe, and something like that is really crucial for us to develop into a more competitive national side going forward," he told World Rugby TV.

“If that type of environment doesn’t happen for us within the existing windows, it is matter of making sure we get stronger test matches and playing as many top teams as we can through the June and November windows.

“We are getting plenty of help from World Rugby with that and we think we have got a pretty good proposed schedule in June and in November.”

Confidence lift

World Rugby’s far-reaching investment programme helped tier two nations like Georgia to deliver beyond expectation at RWC 2015 and narrow the gap between themselves and the more established elite.

Haig says securing direct qualification for RWC 2019 on the back of wins over Tonga and Namibia in England has had a noticeable knock-on effect back home in Georgia.

“The success of what we achieved for the first time in the history of Georgian rugby has permeated not only through the general public and rugby in general in Georgia, it has also given our players a massive confidence lift.

“One thing we’ve noticed while we’ve been training the last five weeks is the level of responsibility the players have taken on board themselves rather than the coaches and that is always a really neat place to get to as far as a group is concerned.

“I don’t think you can understate how important that success was at the Rugby World Cup last year.”

High expectation

Backing that up with another ENC title was vitally important, says New Zealand-born Haig, who is now in his fifth year as Georgia coach.

“It was really important for the fact we were playing games at home for the first time since the World Cup. Rugby is still a developing game here in Georgia and although it is the most popular game we still need to make sure we are playing in front of as many people as we can so that we can get people who maybe support other sports to get involved with rugby. That’s how we build the base of spectators and players and invariably the base for sponsorship and revenue.

“It was also important for the fact that we had a heck of a lot more expectation on us –not only from our friends, family and our fans but from the government, the sponsors and the stakeholders. That’s why we pretty much called up our strongest team when we could.

“To go through the competition unbeaten gives the players confidence and, from our point of view, it also says to rest of the world that we’ve maybe outgrown it. The reality is that we need to try and get something that tests us a little bit more.”

Photo credit: Gogita Bukhaidze