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Argentina’s final assignment of the year is coming up this Saturday against a strong Barbarians lineup in London. The composite side are to play their second match this week after completing a comprehensive ten tries to two win over Gloucester to win 62-14 on Tuesday.
For Argentina the match is to launch the new era of Los Pumas as no players based in Europe are to be involved. This leaves Hourcade without players including Marcos Ayerza, Juan Figallo, Marcelo Bosch, Manuel Carizza, Mariano Galarza, Juan Martín Fernández Lobbe, Juan Pablo Socino, Horacio Agulla, Gonzalo Camacho, Juan Imhoff and Lucas González Amorosino.
With Agulla, Camacho, Imhoff and González Amorosino all unavailable, Manuel Montero continuing in his rehabilitation and Joaquín Tuculet missing the game through injury Hourcade is set to experiment at wing and fullback.
Hourcade’s 25-man roster features Santiago Cordero and Matías Moroni as players who played in these positions at the World Cup. Joining them will be the 6 time capped 25 year old Ramiro Moyano and 20 year old uncapped Emiliano Boffelli as the additional options.
Details reported to Americas Rugby News indicate that Hourcade will be playing Moroni on the right wing, the position he started against Namibia. He, nonetheless, is a specialist outside center and started there in the Quarter Final against Ireland.
The move to to due to the needs of the team at this point in time and also to accommodate Jerónimo De la Fuente who will play outside center despite having been an inside center under Hourcade until now. It will also enable Santiago González Iglesias to play inside center thereby giving Nicolás Sánchez the support of a second play-maker.
Joining Moroni in the back-three will be Cordero and Moyano, the former of whom had an impressive Rugby World Cup and set up Moroni for his try against Ireland. That try came with Moroni standing in an attacking wingers spot, an indication of the width and variation being used by Los Pumas.
With Moyano set to cover for Tuculet this will see Cordero continuing on the wing but playing left rather than right while Boffelli, Felipe Ezcurra and Gabriel Ascárate are set to be the replacement backs. Both Boffelli and Ascárate are contracted to the Super Rugby franchise while Ezcurra is widely expected to be Tomás Cubelli’s replacement due to the Belgrano scrum half moving to the Brumbies.
It is to be a first opportunity at this level for Moyano. His six tests were against Brazil, Chile and Uruguay and came for a noteworthy return of seven tries. He has come through the PladAR system previously playing for the Pampas XV, Argentina A (Los Jaguares) and Argentina’s Sevens side on the world circuit.
