Wounded Argentina will come out guns blazing, Bok coach Nienaber says

Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber is expecting wounded Argentina to fight back strongly in the two teams’ second Test in the Rugby Championship at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Gqeberha on Saturday.

The Boks looked good in their first match against the Pumas last Saturday when they won 32-12 and scored three tries through Cobus Reinach, Aphelele Fassi and Jaden Hendrikse. A big worry for Argentina coach Mario Ledesma is that his charges failed to dot down themselves, despite playing against a Springbok team largely of fringe players.

Nienaber said: “This is only the second Test match Argentina have lost since the World Cup and they have played the All Blacks twice, Australia twice and Wales twice.

“You must remember Wales are the reigning Six Nations champions and they played  three weeks ago,” he said of the threat of Los Pumas.

 “I know Wales were probably without some key players who played in the British & Irish Lions series against us, but still, to go to the Millennium Stadium and pull off a victory like that is commendable.”

Nienaber said he expects Ledesma to make changes for the second game as another defeat will set them back with matches against New Zealand and Australia to come.

“I really rate Argentina’s coaching staff and the quality of their players. There will be some changes and they will pick up on some of the vulnerability in our team. The most important thing for us is to be back to normal. It will be more about reading our game and looking at where we gave them opportunities, and correcting those mistakes. That will be our normal process.

“The one thing that I love about this team is that there are no ‘senior’ players or anything like that because everyone has their own job. If something goes wrong in the maul, at the breakdown or in the scrum, we know who to look at to fix it. We were never in a panic, we were in control a lot of the time.

“We knew cohesion would be an issue with so many changes, but the guys got stuck in,” Nienaber said.