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Making a statement Argentina calls for spot in expanded Super 12
Posted: Sunday June 25, 2000 05:21 PM
SYDNEY (Reuters) -- Argentina's rugby players flew out of Australia on Sunday, renewing calls for the sport's major powers to help them compete at the highest level. The Pumas finished their tour on a high, giving the world champions a real fright before going down 32-25 in the second test at Canberra on Saturday. They had been beaten 53-6 by the Wallabies in Brisbane a week before. "In the first test we were very negative, we didn't realize how powerful the Wallabies were out wide but we knew how to play them this time," Argentina coach Marcelo Loffreda said. "They are the best in the world and so we have to be happy with what we've done. It was a good result. We were competitive." While Argentina were given little hope of winning either of their two tests against the Wallabies, they still came away with victories over the Queensland and New South Wales state teams. Loffreda said those wins were proof that the South Americans could at least match it with the southern hemisphere's top provincial teams and he called on Australian, South African and New Zealand officials to include an Argentine side in an expanded Super 12 tournament. "If rugby is ever going to succeed in Argentina we need to be in the Super 12 or Super 14," he said. "We need a professional structure to be able to compete and to do that we need the help of the big countries." Although the Pumas reached the quarterfinals of last year's World Cup, rugby remains a mostly amateur sport in soccer-mad South America. Some of Argentina's top players, including fly half Gonzalo Quesada, the tournament's leading point-scorer at the World Cup, decided not to come to Australia so they could fulfill club commitments in France. "We can't afford to pay our players so they have to go overseas," explained Agustin Pichot, Argentina's brilliant scrum half. "We need help from other countries or rugby in Argentina could die." Impressed by the Pumas improved showing, Wallaby captain John Eales said he was in favor of helping Argentina rugby. "I am a fan of finding a way to involve Argentina in Super 12, Super 14 or whatever our elite provincial competition becomes," Eales wrote in his weekly newspaper column in the Courier-Mail. "Rugby in Argentina has got to go the next step to professionalism or be left more and more behind. "In this two-test series we've seen talented players with 'Los Pumas' but how much better could they be if rugby was fully professional in their country?"
Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
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