Argentina will be a ‘difficult match’, says Bok boss Rassie

Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus is expecting a stern Test for his players from an inexperienced-looking Los Pumas squad when they meet in a one-off Test in Buenos Aires next week Saturday. Argentina named a 34-man squad to prepare for the clash against the world champions with a number of senior players missing, while 10 uncapped players were included in the group. Despite regulars such as Joaquin Oviedo, Julian Montoya, Gonzalo Garcia, Justo Piccardo and Bautista Delguy being unavailable, Erasmus said that the Pumas still had an experienced core to call upon, which will make them a dangerous outfit.

“They picked a squad now with 10 rookies in there. But if you look at their first choice team, I think that compared to the team that we will take over there, they will definite have more caps than our players,” explained Erasmus. “Although they picked a very inexperienced group, there’s like 14 or 15 guys that are really experienced that they can fall back onto, which will form their spine.

So yeah, it will be a difficult match. “You can see with the way they’ve picked the team, it’s going to be 15 guys with real experience and then a bunch of youngsters with energy who come from the sevens circuit, who are really dangerous and we have to look out for that.” Mixed results Argentina have had a mixed start to their international season, with them suffering losses to Scotland and England, while beating Wales, all at home, but Erasmus isn’t reading too much into those results as he says it takes the Southern Hemisphere teams some time to get up and running. “We’ve learned our lessons many times against Argentina.

If you take your foot off the pedal, you can get a hiding any day, and we certainly want to try and prevent that,” said Erasmus. “I think us, New Zealand and Argentina and Australia, we always struggle to find our feet in our first few matches (of the season). You saw how New Zealand struggled against France, who didn’t even send their first choice team.

“They struggled to find their feet in the first test match and then just got stronger and stronger. We also didn’t hit the ground running (in our Nations Championship games). So it will be a different Argentina.”