Northern Edition

Select Edition

Northern Northern
Southern Southern
Global Global
New Zealand New Zealand
France France

Cheika makes five changes as Argentina look to upset the Springboks

Argentina's Juan Martín Gonzalez celebrates his try versus Australia (Photo by Saeed Khan/AFP via Getty Images)

Michael Cheika has announced an Argentina side to take on South Africa in Johannesburg on Saturday that shows five changes to the starting XV from the round two Rugby Championship win over Australia.

ADVERTISEMENT

The Pumas bounced back from a heavy opening round home defeat to the All Blacks by pipping the Wallabies 34-31 in Sydney with a late score.

Twelve days on from that eye-opening away victory, Cheika has now unveiled an XV to take on the Springboks that has four changes in the backline and another in the pack. The sole alteration to the forwards sees Lucas Paulos promoted from the bench to start at lock in place of the absent Matias Alemanno.

Video Spacer

Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber on Grant Williams starting against Argentina

Video Spacer

Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber on Grant Williams starting against Argentina

In the backline, Juan Cruz Mallia is at full-back in place of Emiliano Boffelli, and Juan Imhoff is on the left wing instead of Rodrigo Isgro with Mateo Carreras switching over to the right wing.

Santiago Chocobares is also at inside centre in place of Jeronimo de la Fuente, and Lautaro Bazan Velez is at scrum-half with Gonzalo Bertranou dropping to the bench.

Third-place Argentina and South Africa in second go into the Championship finale with one win each from two outings, but the title race could be decided by kick-off time at Emirates Airline Park as the unbeaten leaders New Zealand play winless Australia in Melbourne in the day’s earlier match.

The Springboks named their team on Tuesday, an XV that contained nine changes from the team that lost 20-35 to New Zealand in Auckland.

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

LIVE

{{item.title}}

Trending on RugbyPass

Comments

2 Comments
0
007 513 days ago

Let's go Los Pumas!!

A
Alberto 513 days ago

GO PUMAS !!

Join free and tell us what you really think!

Sign up for free
ADVERTISEMENT

Latest Features

Comments on RugbyPass

J
JW 1 hour ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

144 Go to comments
LONG READ
LONG READ 'Springbok Galacticos can't go it alone for trophy-hunting Sharks' 'Springbok Galacticos can't go it alone for trophy-hunting Sharks'
Search