Below par: Argentina
Argentina coach Santiago Phelan was scathing about his side's performance in their 39-22 defeat to France on Saturday.
The 38-year-old was as brutal in his assessment of the Pumas' display as he had been complimentary about their performance in last Saturday's 26-12 victory over Six Nations Grand Slam champions Wales.
Argentina, who go on to play Ireland in Dublin next weekend, had looked comfortable when they led 13-3 before the quarter-of-an-hour mark but two quickfire tries by Vincent Clerc turned the match in the hosts' favour.
"Argentina began the match well but after that lost control of both the ball and the rhythm of the match," said the former international flanker.
"We were not good with our kicking game and handed the initiative to the French.
"France made the most of our errors in scoring their first try. In the second-half there was a lot of shortcomings on my team's part and the replacements did not succeed in adding any momentum to our game."
His captain Juan Martin Fernandez Lobbe, man of the match against Wales but a phantom presence against the French, said that he barely recognised the Pumas side that had played in Lille.
"In terms of the physical aspect, we lacked the precision that we had last week," said the Toulon flanker.
"We came off second best in the rucks and our lack of discipline let us down.
"We know that discipline is a very important part of the game. We held our discipline in the first-half but not in the second and these errors handed points to our opponent."
Comments
Paco says...
@fraserpark
Argentina is investing in its juniors indeed, with excellent results!
Some names: Imhoff, Figallo, Landajo, Vergallo, Montero, Cubelli, Lobo, a.o. Many of them are still playing amateur rugby in Argentina.
But they need to add more youngsters in order to have more alternatives in the future. For the time being you will not see more than this.
Anyway, argentinean rugby is evolving quite fast.
Lets see how they perform against Ireland!
Posted 10:47 21st November 2012
fraserpark says...
pumas have to many tired french based players ithink there rugby is going backwards they need to play more expansive game put resources in to junior rugby in agentina
Posted 01:56 19th November 2012