The Argentine rugby team celebrated a lackluster debut yesterday in the Rugby Championship by losing categorically to the New Zealand All Blacks 41-12 in a packed Malvinas Argentinas stadium in Mendoza.
The Oceanic team, defending champion and top winner of the tournament with 8 titles, settled the game in the first half when they established a 31-0 run with tries from Dane Coles, Ardie Savea, Jordie Barrett, Rieko Ioane and Aaron Smith, complemented by by three conversions from fly half Damian McKenzie.
This first stage had tries for all tastes. Before 15 minutes, the men in black had already stepped on the local in-goal three times. The Pumas, on the other hand, went to the locker room at zero.
In the second, the prop Lucio Sordoni, on his return to Los Pumas since 2020, scored the first Argentine points in the New Zealand goal and at the end of the game Agustín Creevy signaled the second try for the Albiceleste team, converted by Emiliano Boffelli.
During the complementary stage, Beauden Barrett and Emoni Narawa decorated the All Blacks’ scoreboard with two new tries.
The Pumas will present themselves again next Saturday from 6.45 as visitors to Australia at the CommBank Stadium in the city of Sydney. That same day, the All Blacks will host South Africa in Auckland.
“Where we are today is not enough, we have to be critical. I don’t believe in excuses or shortcuts, we have to be better ourselves. Everyone has to look inside and see what they have to improve as a team”, evaluated captain Montoya, adding: “When we are connected we are a team and we can be very dangerous, the thing is that at this level you can’t give anything away, and today we were not the team we want to be”.
“If you ask me what I wanted to see in this game, I wanted to see intensity. And in the first half he was not. They surprised us. We were thinking more about the result than the actions we had to take, or solving things individually instead of sticking with our game plan. We were not so present at the moment”, lamented the captain.
This was the first game for Los Pumas with a view to the World Cup in France to be held in September. Therefore, this presentation in Mendoza had generated a lot of expectation. However, the national team disappointed. Although he will have a quick revenge: next Saturday he will visit Australia from 6:45 in the morning.
The All Blacks, on the other hand, started the World Cup preview on the right foot. The New Zealanders will seek to regain the throne after a 2019 World Cup where they did not meet expectations. The next match will be against the Springboks, also on July 15.
South Africa win
The South African team, current world champion, beat Australia 43-12 at the start of the Rugby Championship tournament. The match, which was played at Loftus Versfeld Stadium, in the city of Pretoria, led by referee Ben O’Keefe, had a 17-5 partial favorable to South Africa.
The Springboks, in a strong performance confirming their tournament bid, defeated the Wallabies on a bonus point by scoring more than three tries.