Argentina name 36-man squad

Editor

Argentina coach Daniel Hourcade has named his first 36-man squad of the year ahead of the upcoming Rugby Championship.

All of los Pumas' big guns return after most did not feature in the two-match series against the French Barbarians, which finished 1-1 after Friday's win by the hosts.

The group will head to Sydney on Saturday ahead of a friendly clash against Randwick on July 9.

The squad will be cut to 28 players when they move on to Christchurch to prepare for their opening Rugby Championship encounter against the All Blacks on July 17.

"Our preparation will be different from the past because we have games in a short space of time," said Hourcade.

"The players who come from Europe have had a higher workload, so for physical training they will have personalised programmes, but when it comes to the rugby, they will work alongside the rest of the group because in three weeks we will play against the All Blacks. 

"The idea of this training camp is to prepare for the World Cup in the best way possible way so perhaps we will switch our team around depending on game time of each player.

"For the matches against South Africa, we will try to line up the team we are thinking of for the World Cup."

Argentina squad: Horacio Agulla, Matías Alemanno, Marcos Ayerza, Marcelo Bosch, Gonzalo Camacho, Santiago Cordero, Agustín Creevy, Tomás Cubelli, Jerónimo de la Fuente, Matías Díaz, Felipe Ezcurra, Juan Martín Fernández Lobbe, Juan Figallo, Lucas González Amorosino, Santiago González Iglesias, Juan Martín Hernández, Ramiro Herrera, Santiago Iglesias Valdez, Juan Imhoff, Facundo Isa, Martín Landajo, Tomás Lavanini, Juan Manuel Leguizamón, Tomás Lezana, Benjamín Macome, Pablo Matera, Julián Montoya, Matías Moroni, Lucas Noguera, Javier Ortega Desio, Guido Petti Pagadizabal, Nicolás Sánchez, Leonardo Senatore, Juan Pablo Socino, Nahuel Tetaz Chaparro, Joaquín Tuculet.