This game against Argentina is a fundamental clash of styles.
It’s fitting, in a way, that Ireland and Argentina should play the game in such a contrasting way given the history between the two. Ireland are a team that revels in structure, shape and minimizing the unknown while Argentina are a side that wants to generate disruption and question marks on the field so they can attack the spaces in between defence and attack. Forget about what you think you know about Los Pumas going back to World Cups past. Argentina in 2018 aren’t your father’s Los Pumas and haven’t been for quite some time.
Despite Argentina’s poor record over the last two years, I think they are a bad matchup for this Ireland side. However, I think Ireland are an even worse matchup for Argentina and that will be vital so far as the result is concerned.
So how do Ireland go about sticking a beating on Argentina in the Aviva tomorrow? First, let’s have a look at the teams.
I’ll cover both selections in the Blood & Thunder Podcast.
The Green Eye Report: Argentina
An “A” would be considered top class by International standards, a “B” would be considered average by regular test standard, a “C” would be considered poor by test standard and an “E” would be something I’d consider an exploitable weakness.
Set Piece
Offensive Scrummaging – B
Defensive Scrummaging – B
Attacking Lineout – B
Defensive Lineout – A
Offensive Maul – C
Defensive Maul – B
Open Play
Defensive Structure – C
Phase Play Power – C
Attacking Creativity – A
Structured Attack Off Set Piece – A
Structured Defence Off Set Piece – E
Overall Fitness – A
Kicking – B
Back Three Kick Positioning – B
Grinding Twelve
The primary reason why I feel Ireland are a really bad matchup for this Argentina side is based on the way they align their defence. Argentina, much like the All Blacks, play with 11 players up in the defensive line, Cubelli (the scrumhalf) floating right behind any defensive ruck and three players in the backfield – usually Moyano, Delguy, Bofelli and, in a rotating fashion as he’s sometimes the last edge defender, Nicola Sanchez. The reasons for this structure are two-fold, in my opinion.
The first is that Argentina are a side that’s built around using width, pace and, importantly, transition as their primary source of attack and, as a result, they leave players in the backfield to facilitate this. If you spill the ball in contact, kick loosely, or get the ball stolen at the breakdown, Argentina are set up to devastate you on transition.
The players they select for this transition game plan have very similar profiles in that they are athletic, very quick laterally and very comfortable with the ball in hand in fluid, chaotic situations. Herein lies the second reason for the defensive alignment – the very qualities that make Argentina so good in transition also mean that most of their backline (Cubelli, Sanchez, aren’t very physically imposing in most defensive situations.
Los Pumas use a modified 11-up defensive system because they have edge players who are capable of covering the gaps left out wide while also having a very physical and aggressive centre-field defence that pressurises the opposition possession. If you turn over the ball to Argentina, they pop the ball to Cubelli (who floats behind every ruck) and the ball is gone wide and up the field before you even know what’s happened.
This is the primary danger for Ireland.
In my opinion, Argentina are most dangerous when we have the ball. If you kick to them poorly – especially from box kicks – they have a backline and support forwards that can blow us away. That goes double for any spilt balls at the breakdown or in contact. Argentina are compact in their defence because they know that, through Orlando, De La Fuente, Ortega Desio and Matera, they have guys who can cover any ball that goes to the strike and run zone too early without a setup and their wingers are adept at “closing the gate” quickly and effectively. The centre-field unit of Lavanni, Petti, Alemanno, Garcia Botta, Medrano and their primary jackal Creevy are incredibly imposing in and around the Hammer zone and are excellent at forcing spills. Los Pumas will invite you to go around them rather than through them, and if you try that without a good centre-field set up, the likes of Ortega Desio and Matera will swallow you up.
As a general rule, Argentina tend not to go after the opposition breakdown unless a clear opportunity to poach presents itself. When they do go after the ball, it’s usually the “B” defender (Creevy) rather than someone from outside “C” as they don’t want to lose bodies from outside the central defensive cluster. If they lose bodies from there, the system falls apart and they can’t blitz.
Usually, you’ll try to break any aggressive blitz by probing over the defensive line with kicks but any kick over the top has to be incredibly accurate to get around their covering backfield defenders and Cubelli sweeping. Doing this usually risks a transition event, which the Pumas are really good at executing.
Argentina’s low numbers in the first line of defence mean that any combination of gain line and quick ball can expose a lot of exploitable space on the edges. Watch the numbers that Australia get folding around the corner on this third phase attack.
Argentina lost two men to a tackle – bad news for their system – and if Australia were a little smarter here they could have had multiple numbers flowing around the corner.
This is an inherent weakness of the Argentinian defensive system. If they start giving up gain line and can’t slow down the opposition recycle, you can superload large numbers around the edges to overwhelm their edge defenders. If you can break the line on one side of the field, you can narrow the defence to a wide ruck, force them off-structure and bring weak one on one defenders like Sanchez, Bofelli and Cubelli into the primary defensive line on the opposite side of the field. The likes of Henshaw, Aki and Stockdale will eat these guys up one on one.
That brings up the other main weakness of the Pumas – set piece defence. In the Rugby Championship, the main source of tries conceded by Argentina came within three or four phases of the lineout or scrum.
Watch South Africa exploit it here;
You can get a good look at the Pumas backfield defensive system here too.They hit three phases infield before coming back against the grain when the Pumas forwards over folded after the lineout. This kind of alignment
Ireland will look to exploit the same tendency in this match.
Off the lineout, Argentina have taken to hiding Sanchez, their weakest defender, as the holding 5m player on 6/7 man defensive lineouts.
They do this to limit how much he can be targetted by big opposition ball carriers – something Ireland did to great effect last season.
In doing so, Argentina have fixed one problem while creating three more. The first one is a big one – Cubelli’s role as a “gate closer” at the tail of the lineout exposes an even weaker defender to big runners and draws cover midfielders out of shape to cover him.
Australia scored a try directly off that tendency here;
The second problem is that removing Sanchez from the defensive line means that Argentina lose their midfield hitters very quickly if you can compress them in the middle of the field and then bounce around them on first phase.
The All Blacks did just that by using a forward runner on a six-man lineout to freeze the outside edge defender.
The third problem is that leaving Sanchez in the 5m line means he’s automatically a front-line defender if the play comes back towards the lineout after one or two phases and, given the way that Argentina’s back row move towards centre-field in the aftermath of any lineout scheme, that can often leave Sanchez defending alongside a lock or front row forward with only another back three player for support. Those alignments mean dog legs in defence and they are meat and drink to Keith Earls and Jordan Larmour.
Set Piece
If I was to describe the Pumas set piece in one word, it would be “efficient”. I’ll get to their scrummaging in a minute – it’s really interesting – but the lineout is something that I think Ireland can get at.
Argentina, for the most part, have a pretty simple lineout system. I’ve watched all of their games in the Rugby Championship and generally, they tend not to put a lot of artifice on their lineout schemes. They have four good jumpers in Ortega Desio, Lavanni, Petti and Alemann and they like to hit them with simple calls that put a premium on speed into the air.
A little naive from the Pumas here. Australia’s spacing should have signalled a “no compete” maul scheme.
Whoever looks like the Puma jumper usually is but they disguise the jumper amongst their four primary targets pretty well. Argentina mainly rely on their good speed in the air and good lifting discipline to get their men in their air quickly. How they’ll react to the challenge of Peter O’Mahony is a good question and should challenge them quite a bit if he gets their timing.
One thing I have noticed is that the more artifice the Pumas put on their lineout schemes, the more likely they are to throw to the tail.
Something to note.
Argentina have a decent maul from close range (but everyone does) and they mostly like to play off a short maul, a maul feint or quick ball off the lineout, be it from the top of off a gimmick play.
This example is mainly bad defence by the Wallabies but it’s a good example of what Argentina can do up the middle of the pitch. Matera (who the Pumas will use as a hard carrying openside in the same manner that Ireland use O’Brien) is a very dangerous ball carrier when running at 10 and he’s got a great skill set in contact and off the floor.
They won’t rely on big busts at #10 though. The Pumas have a few clever plays they like to use to hit teams structural weaknesses in defence.
This play they used against South Africa was designed to attack South Africa’s big pillar defence.
Look for the subtle block line on Mostert at the last ruck and the deliberate targeting of forwards by the Argentinian backs as they run against the grain at pace with hard runners.
That tendency is critical to a lot of what the Pumas like to do off the lineout.
They have quick, hard running midfielders and wingers who are adept at running in heavy traffic and slipping tackles against unbalanced forwards running in the opposite direction. Ledesma will be directly targeting Ireland’s heavy forwards as they break off the maul in a similar way in this game.
When Argentina have a lineout in their own 22, they’ll generally use shortened numbers and go quickly off the top at the front before passing to Matera or Ortega Desio to set up an exit platform. Look for Ireland to attack this tendency.
Bajada
Mario Ledesma has brought back the “bajada” scrummaging technique to Argentina’s arsenal at test level. How is it different to normal scrummaging? On the face of it, there’s one main difference and that’s in the bind of the second row.
In a bajada scrum, the second-rows bind outside the prop’s hips rather than through their legs.
The flankers then bind on lower than the prop’s butt, while keeping their hands flat to the ground on the outside at all times to stabilise the second row they’re binding on and keep the whole scrum going forward.
When the ball is put in, the second row’s outside bind forces all the pressure forward through Creevy onto the opposition hooker, collapsing his bind on his props and peeling the scrum sideways. This will be a big test for Best personally but also the Irish front five and O’Mahony as a whole. This is where Peter O’Mahony’s trait of binding solely on the tighthead prop – Tadhg Furlong in this case – could really nullify what Argentina are looking to do.
Argentina love to play off their scrum and have excellent pace and hands when they get any kind of angle to work with. They’re lethal on that first phase directly following the scrum.
Their pace, close handling and passing range are key parts of their work off the scrum. The bajada is still developing under Ledesma but hasn’t quite aligned itself with the new scrum engagement. I’d expect Argentina to do well on their own ball, perhaps even win a few penalties, but I’d be massively surprised if Feek didn’t have something lined up to spoil the fun. Healy on Medrano should be fun.
Structure
In their phase play, the Argentinan’s like to use a midfield screen with Sanchez stitching a pod of three forwards and a screened midfielder across the pitch. In practice, it’ll look like this;
This is a four-option play, with Sanchez having the option to carry the ball himself if spacing allows, hit the near forward, the middle forward or pull the ball back to the screened midfielder. Here’s how it looks in action;
This structure allows Argentina to play with a lot of width and utilises Sanchez’s passing ability and both midfielder’s pace and handling. The Pumas are much more dangerous in transition or off the set piece than they are in their multiphase play but they’re still dangerous – albeit less so the longer that multiphase set goes on without gaining much ground.
The Pumas are vulnerable to spilling possession and getting attacked on the floor by bigger sides and while they have a lot of aggressive, athletic ball carriers they can run out of steam pretty quickly once they lose momentum and/or a positive angle.
Ireland will do well to limit the Puma’s transition opportunities. Our ball carrying has to be rock solid and patient. Our main attacking structure of three heavy forward pods will really stress the Pumas blitz and 11-up defence as long as we retain possession. The key will be not going wide too quickly. If we can hammer the Pumas in the middle of the field on two or three quick rucks we can narrow them enough to bring Henshaw, Earls, Stockdale and Larmour into play. Failing that, we can use O’Brien, Stander, Ryan, Furlong, Healy and Henderson to rotate and clean in packs of three until the Pumas run out of numbers.
I think we can do a job on them in the maul if we can move them out of position from their initial counter-shove. That’ll challenge Best’s throwing and our lineout calling but if we can do it, there’s road against these lads. Look for Ireland to try and scramble the Pumas’ system off a maul break or maul feint with Earls/Larmour combining close to break.
