Pumas Make One Change

Argentine coach Marcelo Loffreda has made one change to his side for Saturday’s permanent tsb international against Ireland (4.30pm) at Lansdowne Road with the Castres prop Mauricio Reggiardo coming into the front-row in place of the injured Roberto Grau who has a damaged shoulder. Irish rugby followers -particularly those from Munster – will be very familiar with the powerful Reggiardo who earlier in the week came on as a second half replacement in the game against Ireland Development in Donnybrook, a game in which he scored a try.

The Pumas made their team announcement yesterday (Thursday) in an informal manner in Naas Rugby Club and coach Loffreda spoke about the rask his side faces against the Irish on Saturday.
” I think Ireland have improved a lot in the past while, as the result against Australia proves. I would see them as now being up their with England and France in the northern hemisphere. They have a side that has been playing together for some time now and that is very important. I think also that they will want to set the record straight after losing to Argentina last time and maybe also because of the RWC defeat in France. But really for us the performance is more important than the result. We are building towards next year’s World Cup and so we must try and work things out in these games, improve different aspects of our game and of course the best place to do that is on the pitch.”

Argentina.Ignacio Corleto (Stade Francais); G Camardon (Roma), J Orengo (Grenoble), L Arbizue (Bordeaux), D Albanese (Leeds); F Contepomi (Bristol), A Pichot (Bristol); M Reggiardo (Castres), M Ledesma (Narbonne), O Hasan (Agen), I Fernandez-Lobbe (Castres), R Alvarez (Perpignan), S Phelan (CASI), G Longo (Narbonne), R Martin (SIC).
Replacements: J Villar (CUBA), M Scelzo (Narbonne), P Sporleder (Curupayti), M Durand (Champagnat), N Fernandez Miranda (Natal Sharks), J Fernandez Miranda (Hindu), J Nunez Piossek (Huirapuca).