When Argentina, after their memorable run to third place in the 2007 World Cup, made their pitch to enter Europe and turn the Six Nations Championship into Seven, the response apparently took about 30 seconds to deliver. Brief as it may seem, that is still the polite way of giving a flat no. In half a minute you can throw in a few regrets and shrugs and offer a thank you for making the effort and coming all this way. It was still a big no.
It was the best rejection Argentina could have had. They went instead across the oceans into the Rugby Championship of their own hemisphere, where tradition does not come before verve. Speed was everything – and not just the pace of the ball through the hands of the convert to their new passing game, Juan Martín Hernández, or the rapidity of Juan Imhoff and Santiago Cordero on the wing. Speed governed the transition from their one-dimensional forward-dominated rugby to the fluid style of today. So quickly did they embrace the new way that they haven’t stopped laughing. Nobody has enjoyed themselves more at the World Cup than the Pumas.
The forwards are still pretty mean, but they cannot help themselves when it comes to this passing business. They can do it too, their hands the size of the slabs of cow they call steak slipping the peanut ball out of contact – Juan Martín Fernández Lobbe to Leonardo Senatore. This new game, who knew it could be such a thing?
The Australians, for sure. It’s the game of enterprise they’ve been playing for years, and however joyous the revolution in the ranks of their opponents, the Wallabies will reckon they cannot be outdone in an open contest. They will certainly not duck the challenge to give it a go and if their wing Drew Mitchell, currently on 14 World Cup tries, doesn’t go past Jonah Lomu’s 15, something will have gone seriously wrong, or someone inside him will have nabbed a hat-trick. The chances of Matt Giteau not working out the scoring pass are remote to nonexistent.
Argentina’s change from brutal to beautiful coincides with an even more sudden conversion in the Wallaby camp – or to be precise, in their pack. Enterprise was a necessity because the forwards had sort of mislaid the art of pushing as one. Not any more.
They have lost Scott Sio on the loosehead side of the scrum, but it seems to be such an integral part of the system now that his replacement, James Slipper, should pack down with the same eye-bulging fanaticism as the rest of the forwards. It is a strange thing, this devotion to the scrum, but once infected, forwards grow quickly obsessive about it.
It means that Argentina now run like Australia and Australia now push like Argentina. They used to be so far apart and yet here they are, joined by style and their semi-final. At every post there is a duel to savour: Bernard Foley against Nicolás Sánchez, place-kickers and distributors wearing 10; Hernández and Marcelo Bosch, the latter restored after a one-match ban, against Giteau and the Mr Sensible in this midfield of invention, Tevita Kuridrani; Israel Folau, safe enough on his injured ankle, against Joaquín Tuculet, his opposing full-back.
Can Argentina keep passing the ball in a World Cup semi-final, when the proximity of the prize may make hands tremble around it? Can Australia keep their new-found scrummaging collectivity tight in a contest that is bound to make the steak-eaters lick their lips? Mario Ledesma, the Argentinian coach of the Wallaby scrum, is a one-man reform programme, but the Pumas’ scrum is an eight-man tradition and they will not want to be upstaged by one of their own. For all that they play with a smile on their face, expect Argentina to “set” with a grim determination.
It has the makings of the game of the tournament, which is saying something. This World Cup has not lacked for drama. On Sunday, though, it brings together two sides that have radically altered themselves, specifically for this. My guess – and that is all it is – is that Australia will win by a whisker.
