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The Nations Cup begins on Tuesday in Montevideo, Uruguay. Opening the tournament will be a non-capped international of Argentina XV vs Namibia. It is uncapped based the Argentina XV being the ‘next of XV’ and not Los Pumas.
The Argentina XV are coached by RWC 1999, 2003, and 2007 second-rower Ignacio Fernández Lobbe. Under him the team is unbeaten in 2019 having won the Americas Rugby Championship, and the Sudamérica 6 Naciones A tournaments.
Now in June the team is looking for a further title and will begin their campaign on Tuesday afternoon across the Rio de la Plata.
The line-up named to face Namibia includes the most capped scrum-half in Argentine history, Martín Landajo. He has been named to start in an effort for much needed game time following injury and others being favored this year at Los Jaguares.
Fellow Jaguar Bautista Ezcurra will also start. With him playing in the same position as captain Jerónimo de la Fuente he has had just one Super Rugby start thus far in 2019.
Former Jaguares players Diego Fortuny, and Manuel Montero will also play, the former doing so in the starting lineup on the wing, and the latter named as the replacement hooker. Jaguares rookie Rodrigo Bruni joins Fortuny on the bench.
Namibia’s line-up is very strong by their standards. Included are eight players who played against Los Pumas at RWC 2015 in Leicester. They are Johan Coetzee, Wian Conradie, Johan Deysel, AJ de Klerk, JC Greyling, Eugene Jantjies, Johan Tromp, and Tjuee Uanivi.
This underlines the importance of the Nations Cup this year to the Africans. With the cancellation of the Gold Cup Namibia has the Nations Cup as their warm-up campaign ahead of RWC 2019.
They will play in Pool B of the tournament against Canada, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa. A team preview detailing what to expect in full details can be read by clicking here.
There have been three test matches between Argentina, and Namibia. All three occurred at RWCs with Los Pumas winning 67-14 in 2003, 63-3 in 2007, and 64-19 in 2015.
With form this year being vastly superior to that of the 2016-2018 years the Argentina XV should have few problems in beating Namibia convincingly. They enter the match as favorites to win by 25 points.
TEAMS
ARGENTINA XV
1 Nicolás Solveyra, 2 Jose Luis González, 3 Lucas Favre, 4 Ignacio Calas, 5 Jerónimo Ureta, 6 Nicolás Sbrocco, 7 Lautaro Bavaro (capt.), 8 Santiago Montagner, 9 Martín Landajo, 10 Teo Castiglioni, 11 Manuel Montero, 12 Bautista Ezcurra, 13 Agustín Segura, 14 Facundo Cordero, 15 Tomás Albornoz
Replacements: 16 Diego Fortuny, 17 Rodrigo Martínez, 18 Luciano Ortiz, 19 Lucas Santa Cruz, 20 Rodrigo Bruni, 21 Manuel Nogués, 22 Martín Roger, 23 Tomás Cubilla
NAMIBIA
1 Desiderius Sethie, 2 Obert Nortje, 3 Johan Coetzee, 4 AJ Retief, 5 Tjiuee Uanivi, 6 Thomasau Forbes, 7 Muharua Katjijeko, 8 Janco Venter, 9 Eugene Jantjies, 10 Cliven Loubser, 11 Oderich Mouton, 12 Darryl De La Harpe, 13 Johan Deysel (capt.), 14 JC Greyling, 15 Johan Tromp
Replacements: 16 Niel Van Vuuren, 17 Andre Rademeyer, 18 AJ De Klerk, 19 Wian Conradie, 20 Prince Gaoseb, 21 Helarius Kisting, 22 Justin Newman, 23 PW Steenkamp
Date: Tuesday, June 04
Kick-Off: 3:30pm (local)
Venue: Estadio Charrúa, Montevideo, Uruguay
Referee: Ben Whitehouse (Wales)
Assistant Referee: Francisco González (Uruguay), Marcelo Pineyro (Uruguay)
