{"id":178235,"date":"2025-09-29T19:17:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T19:17:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/178235\/"},"modified":"2025-09-29T19:17:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T19:17:12","slug":"capibaras-becomes-4th-argentine-pro-team-in-super-rugby-americas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/178235\/","title":{"rendered":"Capibaras Becomes 4th Argentine Pro Team in Super Rugby Americas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Super Rugby Americas (SRA) will be bigger in 2026. The South American professional league is growing with Argentina set for a fourth franchise. The new SRA franchise will represent the Litoral region of Argentina; specifically the rugby unions of Rosario, Santa Fe and Entre Rios. Rosario will be the regular home of the team but not the exclusive location for home matches.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"BRANDING<\/p>\n

The Litoral franchise joins Argentine teams Los Dogos (C\u00f3rdoba), Los Pampas (Buenos Aires), and Los Tarucas\u00a0(Tucum\u00e1n). Los Dogos were 2024 Champions<\/a> while Los Tarucas had their rookie season<\/a> in 2025.<\/p>\n

The Litoral team will play under the name Capibaras XV. Capibara refers to the world\u2019s largest living rodent. The animal is native to South America, and can be seen in the Argentine Litoral.<\/p>\n

The capibara, also known in Argentina is carpincho, follows animal names such as Los Pumas, Jaguares, Tarucas (a deer from the northern region of the country), and Dogos (after the Argentine Dogo breed).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"SUPER RUGBY AMERICAS EXPANDS TO ROSARIO<\/p>\n

The Uni\u00f3n de Rugby Argentina (UAR) signed contracts to make the Litoral franchise official<\/a>. UAR President Gabriel Travaglini was joined by\u00a0Carlos Fertonani, the CEO of Santa Fe Producciones in addition to the president of the Uni\u00f3n Entrerriana de Rugby, Mart\u00edn Cipriani; the president of the Uni\u00f3n de Rugby de Rosario, Rub\u00e9n Gonz\u00e1lez Fresneda; and the president of the Uni\u00f3n Santafesina de Rugby, Enrique Patrizi as the main guarantors of the agreement.<\/p>\n

Together the UAR and\u00a0Santa Fe Producciones signed a commercial agreement for the new SRA franchise to represent the Litoral beginning in the 2026 season.<\/p>\n

The arrival of a team based in Rosario means Argentina will have four professional teams in SRA 2026 and will now have 50% of the teams in SRA.<\/p>\n

The UAR Regional Member Unions are displayed in the map below. Rosario is in pink, Entre Rios in green and Santa Fe in purple. Litoral on the map signifies the regional High Performance Center.<\/p>\n

\"\"Map of UAR Regional Member Unions.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

SRA began in 2020 as S\u00faper Liga Americana de Rugby (SLAR). It was rebranded to Super Rugby Americas in 2023. The competition began as one team per country. Pe\u00f1arol (Uruguay), and Selknam (Chile) are founding teams while rebranding saw Yacare XV (Paraguay) replacing Ol\u00edmpia Lions and Os Cobras (Brazil) replacing Corinthians.<\/p>\n

Argentina\u2019s first team was Los Ceibos who, with Argentina gone from Super Rugby, was replaced by Los Jaguares XV in 2021. Los Cafeteros Pro joined in 2022 to give Colombia a professional rugby team for the first time. The team played two seasons and is now defunct.<\/p>\n

Expansion in 2023 saw Los Dogos and Los Pampas entering. The former played in C\u00f3rdoba and the latter in Buenos Aires and was a rebranded Los Jaguares XV. The American Raptors also joined to take the league to seven teams. The Denver, Colorado based Raptors played in SRA 2023 and 2024. Los Tarucas joined in 2024. Based in Tucum\u00e1n, the franchise represents NOA, the Argentine North-West.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"2019 WORLD RUGBY u20 CHAMPIONSHIP<\/p>\n

The cities of Rosario and Santa F\u00e9 hosted the 2019 World Rugby u20 Championship<\/a>. The Hip\u00f3dromo de Rosario (Racecourse Stadium) was a primary venue. Among the matches hosted was the final which France won 24-23 against Australia. Los Pumitas defeated France 47-26<\/a> at the same venue earlier on in the tournament.<\/p>\n

The Hip\u00f3dromo de Rosario is expected to be the primary home venue for the new Argentine SRA franchise. When the team potentially joining was being mapped out<\/a>, the municipality publicly stated plans to complete required improvements in order for the synthetic grass surface to again meet World Rugby approval. The plans also included installing lighting for night matches.<\/p>\n

In late June of this year, the Uni\u00f3n de Rugby de Rosario signed an agreement with the City Hall to use one area of the installations, that being where the u20 World Championship was hosted. The location is also set to become the new home of the Uni\u00f3n de Rugby de Rosario and, with the support of the UAR, it will host the regional High Performance Center.<\/p>\n

In addition to playing matches in Rosario, the new franchise may yet move several home matches to other locations. This could see Santa Fe as well as a city in Entre Rios province hosting home matches.<\/p>\n

\"\"photo credit: Leo Galletto \/ World Rugby<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"LOS PUMAS IN LITORAL<\/p>\n

Rosario and Santa Fe have both played host to rugby test matches. Argentina\u2019s recording-breaking win over Australia in the 2024 Rugby Championship took place in Santa Fe<\/a>. Los Pumas and the Wallabies also previously played Rugby Championship matches in Rosario in 2012 and 2013.<\/p>\n

\"\"Cr\u00e9dito Foto: Gero Uranga \/ Gaspafotos \/ Prensa UAR<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"LITORAL PUMAS AND SUPER RUGBY AMERICAS<\/p>\n

The region is an important area for Argentine rugby. Rosario, Santa F\u00e9 and Entre R\u00edos contributed seven players to Argentina\u2019s roster for Rugby World Cup 2023<\/a>: Mayco Vivas and Pedro Rubiolo (C\u00edrculo Rafaelino, Rafaela), Marcos Kremer (Salto Grande, Conc\u00f3rdia), Santiago Chocobares (Pampas, Rufino), Emiliano Boffelli, and Jer\u00f3nimo de la Fuente and Juan Imhoff (Duendes, Rosario).<\/p>\n

The region has also contributed no shortage of players to SRA teams in past seasons. Scrum-halves Juan Cruz Strada (Yacare) and Juan Lovell (Dogos) are examples and Alejo Sugasti (Los Pumas 7\u2019s) is another scrum-half from the region. Any or all could play for the new team<\/p>\n

Fly half Juan Bautista Baronio has had impressive recent seasons for Los Dogos. Another fly half from the region is Valentino DiCapua (Yacare) while center Bruno Heit (Pampas) hooker Ramiro Gurovich (Pampas) and flanker Manuel Bernstein (Pampas) are also products of the area represented by the incoming Argentine SRA franchise.<\/p>\n

\"\"Cr\u00e9dito Foto: Gero Uranga \/ Gaspafotos \/ Prensa UAR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Super Rugby Americas (SRA) will be bigger in 2026. The South American professional league is growing with Argentina…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-178235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178235","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=178235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}