Americas Rugby News Rugby news from across the Americas!
There will be no shortage of Argentine players playing in the 2021 Súper Liga Americana de Rugby (SLAR). The Jaguares XV will entirely consist of Argentine names and all five other teams will have players from South America’s rugby giant.
The number of players varies from one team to the next. The second strongest regional country is Uruguay. The RWC 1999, 2003, 2015 and 2019 competitors have a solid High Performance Center. Peñarol’s roster is also impressive. It contains five Argentine players.
The 2020 SLAR season kicked-off with a bang; Selknam upset Peñarol in Montevideo. Two of the Argentine players from that win will play again for Selknam this year. Selknam’s official 2021 roster contains five Argentine players.
Brazil’s team name is yet to be finalized. In 2020 it was Corinthians; however, this relationship did not see the rugby team profiting whatsoever. Brazil’s team will have four Argentine players. It is a small number comparatively speaking. The prime reason for this is that the CBRu’s position is to prioritize places for Brazilians or Brazilian-eligible players.
Los Cafeteros Pro are yet to finalize their player roster. The Colombian team did, nonetheless, draft ten Argentine players. This number is expected to grow to have a balance between Colombians and Argentines on the final roster.
The team with the most Argentine players is Paraguayan. More than half of the Olímpia Lions’ player roster are from Argentina. There are, nonetheless, Argentine players who are eligible to play for Paraguay via eligibility laws. Rodrigo Gómez Vara and Arturo López are cases in point.
Could an Argentina XV be selected from SLAR teams other than Los Jaguares XV? Yes. Would the team be capable of carrying the name Argentina XV as a competitive team? Yes. Below is a sample XV.
ARGENTINA XV – SLAR
1 Javier Corvalán (Cafeteros Pro), 2 Axel Zapata (Olímpia Lions), 3 Lucas Favre (Olímpia Lions), 4 Nahuel Milan (Peñarol), 5 Manuel Bernstein (Brazil franchise), 6 Conrado Roura (Peñarol), 7 Lucas Santa Cruz (Olímpia Lions), 8 Santiago Portillo (Selknam), 9 Gonzalo García (Cafeteros Pro), 10 Martín Roger (Peñarol), 11 Maximiliano Filizzola (Selknam), 12 Facundo Ferrario (Cafeteros Pro), 13 Santiago Resino (Olímpia Lions), 14 Leopoldo Herrera (Olímpia Lions), 15 Marcos de Sanctis (Brazil franchise)
