‘All Blacks braced for confident Pumas’ – TJ Perenara

Editor

After their loss to the Springboks in Wellington, the All Blacks face containing a confident Argentina team in Buenos Aires on Saturday.

Argentina beat Australia in the last round of the Rugby Championship and have already achieved their best season since joining the competition in 2012.

All Blacks scrum-half TJ Perenara is aware of the ability of the Pumas to take advantage of opportunities they create.

Speaking to media in Buenos Aires he said: “We played them in Nelson and we won, but it was a tough game.

“And I guess the opportunities they took into their game exploited some of our flaws and for a team to be able to do that, well, we take great pride in what we do out on the field and they dismantled us a few a times out there.

“So we know the threats that they have, and we just know as a unit we need to be better.

“If we play to the level we played in Nelson we don’t know if that is good enough this time, especially over here in their backyard. We know we need to step it up and play better than we have played against them this year already.”

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Adding to the All Blacks’ thinking for the game is their need to rebound from that loss to South Africa where the decision-making around the last plays of the game and the lack of a dropped goal attempt have been to the forefront of analysis.

“A couple of decision-making things that if we had scored in the end there we probably wouldn’t be having this discussion but there are opportunities to take a drop goal which a lot of people have highlighted,” added Perenara.

“In all honesty, the winger [Aphiwe Dyantyi] makes the play on D-Mac [Damian McKenzie]. If he doesn’t make that play, we walk in.

“It’s tough when you lost those sorts of games. Hindsight’s a beautiful thing because you can look back on it and be like, ‘man we should have dropped a kick’ but then if we dropped a kick and missed it and there’s a three-on-two we’re like ‘man we should have taken the three-on-two’.

“That’s what sport is. It’s the heat of the battle and you make those decisions and you learn from them hopefully.”

Hooker Codie Taylor said: “We know that they (Argentina) are going to have a lot of confidence off the back of their win and they should, they are a great team.

“They have new coaches and are playing really good footie and we respect what they do on the field, and the results that they’ve been getting just show they are a team that you can’t take lightly and we never have.”