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Los Pumas call NRL star Nathan Cleary into training camp ahead of All Blacks showdown
By AAP
NRL superstar Nathan Cleary has been giving Argentina players kicking tips as they look to notch back-to-back victories over the All Blacks in the Tri Nations on Saturday night.
Soaking up the NRL off-season after Penrith's grand final defeat and then the NSW State of Origin series loss, Cleary was at the Pumas' training at Leichhardt Oval on Thursday.
Through a connection with his kicking coach Daryl Halligan, Cleary turned out to give some of the young Pumas some pointers - to the delight of Argentina coach Mario Ledesma, who became a rugby league fan while an assistant coach at the Wallabies and the NSW Waratahs.
Cleary, who received some mid-season advice himself from AFL premiership captain Trent Cotchin, is noted as one of the sharpest boots in the NRL.
"His kicking coach is in New Zealand and he couldn't come so he offered Nathan to come and give some pointers to the boys," Ledesma said.
"I thought it was really nice of him to come and give us a hand.
"Being a big rugby league fan I was happy to have him."
The Pumas woke up to news of the death of Argentine football great Diego Maradona, who had attended many of their tests including those at the 2015 World Cup.
Ledesma said the coaching staff felt his passing more than the players, who had only seen his legendary acts online.
Playing 84 tests, Ledesma said he had met Maradona several times and recalled his impact at a Pumas-All Blacks match.
"We were playing against the All Blacks, the game was started and Diego came out and waved and everything stopped," Ledesma said.
"We Argentinians all stopped and looked up, and the All Blacks stopped.
"The world stopped when he was there, he had a kind of magic."
Ledesma said the Pumas would try to honour him on the field at McDonald Jones Stadium.
"He's a big figure in our country and he epitomised a lot of the way the Argentinians are," he said.
"We'll try to remember him the best way possible, which was on the field representing the colours, and use that as an example of how to play for this jersey."
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Like I've said before about your idea (actually it might have been something to do with mine, I can't remember), I like that teams will a small sustainable league focus can gain the reward of more consistent CC involvement. I'd really like the most consistent option available.
Thing is, I think rugby can do better than footballs version. I think for instance I wanted everyone in it to think they can win it, where you're talking about the worst teams not giving up because they are so far off the pace we get really bad scoreline when that and giving up to concentrate on the league is happening together.
So I really like that you could have a way to remedy that, but personally I would want my model to not need that crutch. Some of this is the same problem that football has. I really like the landscape in both the URC and Prem, but Ireland with Leinster specifically, and France, are a problem IMO. In football this has turned CL pool stages in to simply cash cow fixtures for the also ran countries teams who just want to have a Real Madrid or ManC to lose to in their pool for that bumper revenue hit. It's always been a comp that had suffered for real interest until the knockouts as well (they might have changed it in recent years?).
You've got some great principles but I'm not sure it's going to deliver on that hard hitting impact right from the start without the best teams playing in it. I think you might need to think about the most minimal requirement/way/performance, a team needs to execute to stay in the Champions Cup as I was having some thougt about that earlier and had some theory I can't remember. First they could get entry by being a losing quarter finalist in the challenge, then putting all their eggs in the Champions pool play bucket in order to never finish last in their pool, all the while showing the same indifference to their league some show to EPCR rugby now, just to remain in champions. You extrapolate that out and is there ever likely to be more change to the champions cup that the bottom four sides rotate out each year for the 4 challenge teams? Are the leagues ever likely to have the sort of 'flux' required to see some variation? Even a good one like Englands.
I'd love to have a table at hand were you can see all the outcomes, and know how likely any of your top 12 teams are going break into Champions rubyg on th back it it are?
Go to commentsYou always get idiots who go overboard. What else is new? I ignore them. Why bother?
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