Think of Brazil and you think of sun, samba, soccer and scrummaging. Maybe not the last one, but it could be a matter of time before that changes.

Right now Brazil’s front row might just be the most fearsome in world rugby, laying waste to opposing scrums during the recent Americas Rugby Championship. Canada and USA’s front rows were both popping up like a jack in the box against the Brazilian pack. Higher calibre opposition have also been obliterated. The New Zealand Maori were marched back at least 15 metres in a match in Sao Paulo last November while Brazil secured a famous victory over an Argentina XV in May with a last-minute pushover try.

As qualified a judge as Graham Rowntree, the former Lions scrum coach, describes the Brazil scrum as “seriously tasty” while Milton Haig, the head coach of Europe’s great scrummagers Georgia, remembers his jaw hitting the floor the first time that he saw them in action. “I was doing some analysis on another team and that’s why I ended up seeing them and I just thought, ’holy s***’,” Haig said. “They have got some big strong men in their front row, just as big as ours.”