Pablo Lemoine

Pablo Lemoine is the head coach of Chile and the man who took Los Condores to their first Rugby World Cup. He has been in the job since August 2018, an unusually long tenure that is the whole point of what he has built.

Born in Montevideo in March 1975, he was a prop who won 48 caps for Uruguay and played at the 1999 and 2003 World Cups. He became the first Uruguayan to turn professional when he joined Bristol in 1998, and later played for Stade Francais and Montauban.

Uruguay, then Chile

He coached Uruguay from 2012 to 2015, taking Los Teros to the 2015 World Cup through the repechage, then served as the Uruguayan union’s High Performance Director. After a brief spell with Germany he took the Chile job in 2018, when the country had never qualified for a World Cup.

Chile beat Canada and then the USA to reach the 2023 tournament, their first, and qualified again for 2027 with a landmark win over Samoa. His contract was extended for four years in 2023.

Style

Lemoine’s Chile are built on ferocious defensive commitment and forward physicality from a tiny resource base, and on a long-horizon programme rather than short-term selection. He works closely with Selknam in Super Rugby Americas to keep a domestic core together. One of his internationals called him “the Bielsa of rugby”, which captures both the intensity and the devotion.