Watch the Springboks battle Los Pumas live and on-demand via Stan Sport.<\/a><\/p>\nAustralia sit on top with 11 points, followed by South Africa and New Zealand on 10, while Argentina have nine.<\/p>\n
But they have not beaten South Africa outside Argentina in their last 10 meetings and on Saturday will face a Springboks side still bristling from an underwhelming campaign that was saved by their record 43-10 victory over New Zealand in Wellington.<\/p>\n
Argentina coach Felipe Contepomi has beefed up his pack for what is expected to be a bruising contest in Durban with Pablo Matera returning at flank and Franco Molina and Lucas Paulos coming into the second row.<\/p>\n
They have also gone with a 6-2 split between forwards and backs on the bench, a rare selection for Contepomi.<\/p>\n
“We know about physical power, especially in the forwards, from South Africa,” he told reporters in Durban on Thursday.<\/p>\n
“It is not the first time we go 6-2 against South Africa and it is a strategic plan that may or may not go well, but it is what we have chosen to do.”<\/p>\n
The Springboks have moved away from a 6-2 split this season, defusing their Bomb Squad to a degree, as they try and play a more expansive game.<\/p>\n
They have selected much the same team that scored six tries in inflicting New Zealand’s heaviest ever Test defeat.<\/p>\n
The experienced duo of centre Damian de Allende and lock Eben Etzebeth come into the team after injuries to Aphelele Fassi and Lood de Jager.<\/p>\n
The Springboks have had mixed results with their new game plan, but when they get it right, have proven unstoppable.<\/p>\n
“This is a vital match for both us and the Pumas. If one takes into consideration they beat New Zealand and Australia in the first four rounds, as well as the British & Irish Lions earlier in the season, there’s no doubt we’ll treat them with the respect they deserve,” Springboks coach Rassie Erasmus said.<\/p>\n
“As things stand, any team could win the title, so we need to capitalise on the point-scoring chances we create and play for the full 80 minutes if we want to get the desired result.”<\/p>\n
The teams will meet again in the final round of the Rugby Championship in London on October 4.<\/p>\n
ARGENTINA (15-1): Juan Cruz Mallia; Rodrigo Isgro, Lucio Cinti, Santiago Chocobares, Mateo Carreras; Santiago Carreras, Gonzalo Garcia; Joaqu\u00edn Oviedo, Marcos Kremer,
\nPablo Matera; Lucas Paulos, Franco Molina; Joel Sclavi, Julian Montoya (capt), Mayco Vivas<\/p>\n
Replacements: Ignacio Ruiz, Boris Wenger, Francisco Coria Marchetti, Guido
\nPetti, Pedro Rubiolo, Juan Martin Gonzalez, Simon Benitez Cruz, Tomas Albornoz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Argentina hope to make it a hat-trick of wins against their southern hemisphere rivals for the second year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[12910,64,63,760,85,36831],"class_list":["post-169134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-argentina","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-the-rugby-championship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}