{"id":179754,"date":"2025-10-05T03:07:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-05T03:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/179754\/"},"modified":"2025-10-05T03:07:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-05T03:07:10","slug":"what-eight-friends-and-a-bag-of-boots-tell-us-about-argentinas-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/179754\/","title":{"rendered":"What eight friends and a bag of boots tell us about Argentina\u2019s rise"},"content":{"rendered":"

With his seven friends, Mariano Robles got to Twickenham three hours before the game began. They\u2019d come from Buenos Aires, all wearing the light blue and white hooped shirts of their team. Not one of them had ever been to English rugby\u2019s headquarters and now they felt they were arriving at the gates of the citadel. Something they\u2019d long wanted to do. <\/p>\n

Standing by the lineout sculpture at the corner of Rugby Road, Mariano couldn\u2019t hide his excitement. What made it special? \u201cThis is where the game began, in England,\u201d he said. Getting everyone here was his idea.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d been married to Ines. They had four children. Then Ines got cancer. She fought it for a long time but died eight years ago. The sadness, he says, is always there. He had the kids to take care of. Life went on. More recently Mariano met Agustina and they will get married in late November. He would have preferred a September wedding but Delfina, his daughter, had already planned a holiday in Australia and wasn\u2019t impressed by the clash of dates. \u201cDad, you can\u2019t get married until I return home,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

So the wedding was moved to November. \u201cIf there\u2019s one woman I don\u2019t want to cross, it\u2019s my daughter,\u201d Mariano says.<\/p>\n

Not fancying the idea of a December honeymoon, he suggested to Agustina that they bring it forward to September. Having spent a short time there in 2015, he wanted to return to Scotland for a proper holiday. He and Agustina looked at the dates and settled on the last ten days of September. Then Mariano realised he\u2019d be leaving London at the beginning of the week that the Pumas were in town.
Some temptations are too great to resist.<\/p>\n

He got in touch with his friends and suggested: \u201cHow about we spend a week in London and go to the game?\u201d On Monday he took Agustina to Heathrow and wished her a safe flight. Soon his friends were coming in from Buenos Aires. They rented a house at Foots Cray in southeast London and had a fine week in the capital, but the special moment was the game.<\/p>\n

\"Justo<\/p>\n

Argentina\u2019s Justo Piccardo withstands Damian de Allende\u2019s tackle at Twickenham on Saturday<\/p>\n

TIMES AND SUNDAY TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER MARC ASPLAND<\/p>\n

It was an interesting battle. With a dominant scrum and Andrea Piardi, the referee, seemingly intent upon setting a record for scrum penalties, it was remarkable that South Africa were defending for their lives at the end, holding only a nine-point advantage over opponents who attacked with speed and no little skill. The Pumas\u2019 late converted try, cutting the deficit to two, was a thing of beauty as the outstanding Santiago Carreras executed the most perfect cross-kick for Rodrigo Isgr\u00f3 to score.<\/p>\n

Among the mysteries of rugby, Argentina\u2019s excellence is the most unfathomable. How can a country with no professional league produce an endless stream of fine players? This season they beat New Zealand and Australia in the Rugby Championship. They\u2019ve won in South Africa. They are never a pushover.<\/p>\n

\u2022 South Africa overpower Argentina to retain Rugby Championship<\/a><\/p>\n

How do they do it?<\/p>\n

Speaking outside Twickenham with one of Mariano\u2019s friends, German Pando, there was a clue. German carried a plastic bag on his way to the stadium. Inside were a pair of boots that he\u2019d brought from Buenos Aires for the Argentina prop Tom\u00e1s Rapetti. When Rapetti was a kid, he played for the Alumni club in Buenos Aires when German was a coach.<\/p>\n

German became friends with Tom\u00e1s\u2019s dad, Juan Jos\u00e9. Before leaving Buenos Aires last week, German got a call from his old friend. Young Tom\u00e1s had damaged his boots in Durban and needed his second pair. They were the boots that German had in his bag. He got them to the tight-head prop, who is just 20, and shortly after Rapetti came on in the second half, Argentina got their first scrum penalty. Magic boots or what?<\/p>\n

You may think this sounds amateur, a friend of a player\u2019s father bringing boots to a prop about to play South Africa before 72,000 fans in London. The truth is that the amateur game has been the rock upon which the Pumas are built. Rapetti is going to be a good one. He is one of only five players in history who played for three years with Argentina Under-20.<\/p>\n

\"Canan<\/p>\n

Juli\u00e1n Montoya, on the ground, halts Moodie but cannot stop South Africa sealing back-to-back Rugby Championship titles with a 29-27 win<\/p>\n

TIMES AND SUNDAY TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER MARC ASPLAND<\/p>\n

Mariano is also a member of Alumni. \u201cWe are the current champions of Buenos Aires, which is a big thing for us. In the final, we had an attendance of around 15,000, but it is totally amateur,\u201d he says. \u201cNobody gets paid to play and we like to say that you have to pay to play for Alumni. The players, or their parents, must pay the annual subscription like everyone else. It is the same for every rugby club in Argentina.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are a very traditional, amateur club. We didn\u2019t get round to putting in proper female toilets until six years ago. That\u2019s how traditional we were!\u201d<\/p>\n

Pablo Matera has been one of the great Puma players of this generation. Twelve seasons of Test rugby, 116 caps. Matera learnt his rugby at Alumni. You might imagine he is an iconic figure at the club. Mariano says not. \u201cThe heroes at Alumni are the guys who have played for years for the team. We love these guys. When Pablo comes back to us, we will love him.\u201d<\/p>\n

I watched in wonder as the Pumas competed against the world champions while conceding a succession of scrum penalties. Somehow they found a way. For all the class of Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, Canan Moodie, Cheslin Kolbe and Damian Willemse in the Springboks\u2019 back line, the Pumas passed the ball quicker and slicker. Their skill level was higher.<\/p>\n

With a swirling wind, the aerial battle was more important than usual. Here again, the Pumas were better. The wings Juan Cruz Mall\u00eda and Bautista Delguy were outstanding in this area. Their skill and pluck meant a Test match that could have been a massacre became a contest. It is a tribute to the amateur game in Argentina that two young and inexperienced half backs, Sim\u00f3n Ben\u00edtez Cruz and Ger\u00f3nimo Prisciantelli, should have been so good.<\/p>\n

According to Mariano, there is another factor at work. \u201cWhen the best players in our amateur game reach a certain level, they go to play at clubs in France and England. This is giving them the experience and the competition they need,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Given their circumstances, Argentina may be the most admirable team in world rugby. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With his seven friends, Mariano Robles got to Twickenham three hours before the game began. They\u2019d come from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179755,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-179754","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}