Argentina. Land of Corned Beef, Eva Peron, the Tango, and Los Pumas rugby team. Whilst their footballing counterparts, driven by Maradonna and primadonnas, have twice won the World Cup, the Argentine rugby team has never dominated on the world stage. They face a permanent struggle in fact. They have no annual tournament to compete in (entry to the Tri-Nations in 2012 is long overdue), an amateur domestic league and their players ply their trade far and wide across Europe (mainly France, a place that has become a home from home for their top stars).
Despite this, they finished third in the 2007 World Cup and come to Twickenham ranked higher than England in the IRB rankings list.
Argentina have always produced great forwards, particularly front five forwards. Scrummaging is in their blood. Some of the forwards turned out by the Pumas are bigger and stronger than the beef cattle that roam the Humid Pampa. Their problem (like Italy) has always been finding backs who can convert possession into points. The reason for Argentina’s success over the last few years is that those backs finally appeared. The likes of Juan Martin Hernandez, Felipe Contepomi, Ignacio Corleto came on the scene and provided the dash to go with the dump trucks up front. Sadly none of these three will feature at Twickenham and the test for Argentina will be whether the new players they bring in to their back line can match the exploits of the missing stars.
Although maybe the backs won’t have to do much. The forecast is for a torrential downpour in TW1. Manna from heaven for the likes of Scelzo, Roncero, Albacete. One shudders to think what that crowd could do to England’s pack.
England’s pack. Yes. Where do we start? Forget the injury excuses. Compared to Argentina’s preparation for this match we have nothing to complain about. There was an interesting statistic on Sky’s Rugby Club last night. Against Australia, the England front five, between them, carried a total of 11 times, for a total of 11 metres gained. 11!! No wonder we are struggling to dent holes in attack if our big men are not getting over the gainline! OK so Steve Borthwick might be in the side for leadership and lineout (alledgedly). That is fine if you pick someone alongside him who is a big brute (a Danny Grewcock if you like). Louis Deacon is not that person. Presumably James Haskell and Dylan Hartley have been introduced to rectify this glaring issue. My question would be, who in this England pack is going to do the dirty work, the hard grunt around the fringes, knocking down the waves of big Argentine forwards? Joe Worsley is on the bench but I would have picked him to start this one. Still, the team is what it is.
On another note, it is disrespectful that the RFU still do not consider Argentina worthy of the same status as the other SANZAR nations when it comes to billing this match. Yes it makes it easier to get tickets, but is it not time Argentina were given some more kudos? After all they beat England on their last visit to Twickenham. Dom and I were at that match ( a depressing experience) and for the first time ever we nearly had a fight at a rugby match. With England “fans”. Who objected to us applauding good Argentina play. Sometimes free ticket allocation is not a good thing.
So who will win the game? Well, Jonny will kick the points again to keep England in touch, Argentina will probably struggle to gel and surely Shane Geraghty cannot play as badly as last week? But that rain….
I think England will sneak a win by no more than 4 points. But then I also think Los Pumas will claim another (marginally) against the odds victory to add to the impressive list of notches on their belt.
November 13, 2009...5:07 pm
Welcome Argentina!!
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