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The reason Julian Montoya has ‘faith’ in his Pumas for England date
By Liam Heagney
Argentina skipper Julian Montoya has spoken about what is giving him great confidence about his team ahead of their Rugby World Cup campaign which opens with the heavyweight Pool D fixture versus England next Saturday in Marseille.
With the English enduring a horrible run of results under rookie Test-level head coach Steve Borthwick, the Pumas are favoured to get their tournament off to a winning start.
Fresh from finishing off their warm-up match preparations with a comfortable August 26 win over Spain in Madrid, Argentina are currently hunkered down at their La Baule-Escoublac base camp in Pays de la Loire ahead of their trip south to Marseille on Thursday.
At their arrival media briefing, Montoya, who plays his club rugby at Leicester in England, expressed his delight that the tournament was about to start with Argentina very optimistic about their chances of doing well.
"What do I expect from the team? What we have been doing since we started: train hard, enjoy living this experience and support each other. That we are authentic, that we express ourselves as we are, with the good and the bad. That we are together,” he said.
“We know that there will be very good moments and others that may not be so good, but we have to be prepared for all of that, which is what we have been doing since we started this road to Rugby World Cup.
"I have faith in the team and the tightness of the group. We are all on the same page, players and staff, and we trust the process we are doing."
It was 2007 – when the World Cup was last staged in France – that Argentina lit up the tournament with their third-place finish. A vast support followed them around the country 16 years ago and Montoya is thankful a similar size of support is expected in the coming weeks.
"I want to thank all the people who I know will come to see us at the games and those who will follow us on television from Argentina,” he said.
“We as a team always talk about sharing the jersey – we have the privilege of putting on the shirt and being here, but we represent an entire country."
Coach Michael Cheika, who was in charge of the Australian team beaten by England in the 2019 quarter-finals, added: "There was a lot of preparation, not only the weeks in Portugal but also for the work done in Argentina. All our players are ready for the first game.
"I have experience in World Cups, both XVs and rugby league, and I want to share that experience with my squad. We are only thinking about ourselves. I say it with being respectful: everything happening outside is a distraction for us."
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Latest Comments
Yeah I actually think it was Havili that took it off him. Not bad himself, but on the advice of Razor, who didn't even pursue it and use Havili on a split bench as 10 cover?
One huge cluster#$@% but I think you could be right, I liked O'Connor when he won at the Reds and I've just got a funny feeling he's going to dominate Super Rugby, kinda like how Cooper came back to the Wallabies as an experienced head and spat out South Africa. I think James could do the same with the Blues and other Aus sides. I'd really love Rivez to get a lot of minutes though.
Go to commentsI rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.
He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.
The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).
The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.
The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).
It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.
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