Pampas Overcome Yacare in Ferocious Battle in the Rain

It rained hard in Buenos Aires on Friday. Before and during the match there were heavy showers. It did not affect the quality of rugby; both Los Pampas and Yacare came to San Isidro to play. With a 22-12 victory, Los Pampas remain on track for a home Semi Final.

It was ferocious at times. Foul play in the form of high tackles and combative ruck clearances contributed to yellow cards. There were five yellow cards in all during the 80 minutes of rugby.

Scrum-half come fly half, Manuel Nogués opened the scoring. He found something from nothing to run around defenders and score in the left corner. He would out-do himself later on with an even better score wherein he darted through there defenders.

In between Nogués’ two first half tries there were two other tries. The teams each crossed once. Argentina XV hooker Axel Zapata did so for Yacare from a rampaging maul while center Justo Piccardo latched on to a Juan Cruz Strada fumble to score for Los Pampas.

The scores were 19-5 at half-time. Los Pampas only second-half points came in the form of a penalty. Replacement Joaquín de la Vega Mendía landed a penalty eleven minutes from full-time. Yacare responded with a try to Joaquín Lamas. It meant a 22-12 scoreline with ten minutes remaining.

The Buenos Aires side now travel to the USA to face the Raptors next weekend. Yacare fly to Chile too face Selknam in a top-four clash.

SCORING

PAMPAS (22)
Try – M Nogués 2 (3′, 35′); J Piccardo (26′)
Con – M Nogués (27′, 35′)
Pen – J de la Vega Mendía (69′)
YC – E Fourcade (16′); S Pernas (19′)

YACARE (12)
Try – A Zapata (21′); J Lamas (70′)
Con – J Lamas (22′); J Lamas (71′)
YC – F Puertas (6′); R Portillo (41′); R Parada Heit (51′)

LINEUPS

PAMPAS
1 Matías Medrano, 2 Ramiro Gurovich, 3 Estanislao Carullo, 4 Eliseo Fourcade, 5 Marcelo Toledo, 6 Manuel Bernstein (capt.), 7 Nicolás D’Amorim, 8 Joaquín Moro, 9 Ignacio Inchauspe, 10 Manuel Nogués, 11 Jerónimo Ulloa, 12 Justo Piccardo, 13 Bruno Heit, 14 Santiago Pernas 15 Benjamín Elizalde

Replacements: 16 Ignacio Bottazzini, 17 Javier Corvalán, 18 Javier Coronel, 19 Rodrigo Fernández Criado, 20 Tomás Bernasconi, 21 Simón Benítez Cruz, 22 Joaquín de la Vega Mendía, 23 Juan Pablo Castro

YACARE
1 Ezequiel Reyes, 2 Axel Zapata, 3 Rolando Portillo, 4 Lucio Anconetani, 5 Mariano Garcete (capt.), 6 Juan Pérez Rachel, 7 Felipe Puertas, 8 Nicolás Parada Heit, 9 Juan Cruz Strada, 10 Joaquín Lamas, 11 Juan González, 12 Sebastián Urbieta, 13 Ramiro Amarilla, 14 Arturo López, 15 Ramiro Moyano

Replacements: 16 Ignacio Palillo, 17 Daniel Cabral, 18 Enrique Quinteros, 19 Juan José Heisecke, 20 Ariel Núñez, 21 Gonzalo Barreiro, 22 Tomás Vanni, 23 Gianfranco Parodi

MATCH HIGHLIGHTS

OFFICIALS

Referee: Gonzalo De Achaval (AR)
Assistants: Juan Maio (AR); Damián Schneider (BR)
TMO: Marcela Pilara (AR)