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The tries were slow to come, almost in dribs and drabs, but in the end they gushed forth like water from a waterfall. Two in the first 40 minutes, three in the next 25, four in the last 15. Nine in total, a record for the Pumas against a Tier 1 team. The 67-27 victory against Australia last Saturday in Santa Fe was a masterpiece, worthy of Rodin or Michelangelo.
After the match, several of the players spoke about “to chip away at the stone”a concept they recently coined and which they successfully applied on the Colón pitch. The parable, however, has little to do with art. In fact, as spectacular as it may have been, the victory was far from the perfection of the “Thinker” or “La Piedad”. Rather than referring to a sculptor, it refers to the work of a worker.
“We talk a lot about chipping away at the stone until it breaks,” he said after the match. Matthew Carrerasone of the figures, vital in the recovery of the Pumas after an adverse start. What does this analogy mean? That A match is a long-term task, where things are not resolved with a single play. from one moment to the next, but rather it is a progressive work, which requires patience and concentration to accurately execute each individual action, and whose sum will lead, first, to developing the intended game and, consequently, to achieving the desired result.
Mateo Carreras practices a tackle against the WallabiesGustavo Garello – AP
On the Colón pitch, the stone was broken more or less after the Pumas’ fourth try, at minute 25 of the second half. The great try by Joaquín Oviedo, the first of two on his personal account, ended up demoralizing the Australians, who definitively gave up and stopped fighting. Absolute merit of the Argentine team, who continued to insist with the same impetus. Not out of a thirst for revenge after the defeat of the previous week or with the intention of breaking any of the many numerical records they broke, but to embody on the pitch their purpose of playing with the same intensity from minute 1 to 80. In other words, to fulfill the proposed motto of “breaking the stone.”
“We talked a little bit about chipping away at the rock and I think that’s what we did,” the captain said. Julian Montoya After the match, in his 100th game in a Pumas shirt, the hooker was one of the Pumas’ stars. He appeared when the team was struggling to find its feet. He showed good intentions in attack but, as in the previous match, his advances were frustrated by his own mistakes. A couple of defensive disengagements allowed two easy tries and Australia was winning 20-3 after half an hour. Mateo Carreras started the comeback and then Montoya finished it off: he recovered a ball in the ruck and thus started the action that would end with him crossing the in-goal to get within three before the end of the first half.
It was a succession of individual successes that led to the recovery. “Every individual action is for the team,” Montoya continued. “That is what is starting to appear. Trusting in what we were doing, not trying to be the hero of the moment, but trusting in what we were doing, that if we did it, things would open up.”
In short, even when things weren’t going well, they stuck to the script. They kept going. chipping away at the stone.
One of the greatest virtues that the team has been demonstrating Felipe Contepomisince he took over the technical leadership this season, is the ability to recover from bad moments. They are still far from reaching the famous performance floor that they aspire to that allows them to be consistent game after game. A memorable victory like the one achieved against the All Blacks in Wellington is followed by a thrashing in the return match in Auckland. Even within each match, gaps emerge that put them up against it. The perfect match does not exist, insists the coach. But the Pumas demonstrated their ability to react positively to adversity, even when it is due to their own faults rather than to the virtues of the rival. Saturday’s comeback is a perfect example of this improvement; not long ago it was common to see the team psychologically sink after a negative action.
Felipe Contepomi, coach of Los PumasMateo Eyes – AP
The victory put the Pumas in the race for the title. It is almost a utopia, considering that in the last two dates they will face the two-time world champions in round-trip matches, who are undefeated after a memorable series of two victories against the All Blacks and the difference of eight points in the table. For the first match, on the 21st of this month in Santiago del Estero, coach Rassie Erasmus announced that he will bring an alternative squad, while another group will remain in South Africa preparing for the rematch. In any case, South Africa has a very even squad of 45 players. It is possible that Salmaan Moerat (he would be the captain), Thomas du Toit, Jan-Hendrik Wessels, Marco van Staden, Steven Kitshoff, Makazole Mapimpi and Manie Libbok, absent on Saturday in Cape Town, will travel to Argentina.
Whoever plays, it will be a colossal challenge. Los Pumas will have to chip away from start to finish to have any chance.
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