• • Facebook
  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • Technorati
  • Reddit
  • Stumble Upon
  • Furl

A year ago Argentina were basking in the aftermath of an incredible USA Sevens win in San Diego – the start of a strong run for the Pumas which saw them reach the final of the World Cup in Dubai a month later. But times have changed and following some bad losses in Wellington and Las Vegas in recent weeks, Frankie Degas discusses the changes that have occurred and why the future for Chile is cloudy.

There is obvious disappointment in the Pumas camp. On the first day there just wasn’t the commitment there. There wasn’t the passion they always bring.

This improved in the knockout stages, but they badly missed their captain Santiago Gomez Cora who could have bought them badly some needed experience.

Overall from looking at both Wellington and Las Vegas some things need to be changed for the Pumas. They may be new to Sevens bugt I jusgt felt they haven’t performed at times and have suffered poor defeats to the likes of Canada and then Japan in Vegas.

Even though they were defending champions heading into this tournament, it almost didn’t feel like they were such as its a different location and of course a change of personnel from last year. The team back in San Diego and at the Dubai World Cup had reached their peak. Things have changed though with players moving on and this a new group..

The goal at the start of each tournament is and must be to try and reach the Cup quarter-finals. I think that will still be the case. In Wellington their loss to Canada wasn’t them being too confident I just think they were shocked by them.

They were determined not to let the same thing happen here against Japan but the same thing happened. England...It was a tough group with Wales who have become a bit of a nemesis.

Argentina might not have many tournaments but there is a new structure in place for Sevens. We have these contracted players and twenty-five guys who regularly play Sevens. The set up is in place but they just need some more tournaments.

They seem to always struggle in New Zealand but usually up their game for the USA – winners in 2005 and 2009. It’s a tournament that is usually very kind to them so again makes the recent weekend’s showing particularly unsatisfactory.

Situations in games where you really saw the lack of experience shown but that must be expected.
They have an enlarged Sevens squad of twenty-five people with four of them contracted. That means those five get to train more specifically for Sevens.

Gomez Cora wasn’t fit and a couple of others didn’t really perform so they need to work out what they want to do. Questions need to be answered.

Originally there was a plan to separate the Sevens and 15-a-side teams in Argentina. But the side has already lost Lucio Lopez Fleming who was one of those contracted players who has now been bought into the 15s. So you still don’t know what will happen and the system is still a little muddled. The 15-a-side team will be based in South Africa for the Vodacom Cup so again this could create problems going forward.

Tough for Chile

Chile were also going to find it tough competing at this level with not much Sevens behind them. Many of their players also represent the 15-a-side national team so their player base is obviously much smaller. They would have enjoyed their win over Japan in the Bowl quarter-final at the start of day, particularly as it was the same opposition that had beaten the Pumas.

They qualified for this event back in January 2009 when they finished second behind Argentina back in the CONSUR championships in Sao Jose dos Campos Brazil.

We recently had the 2010 CONSUR event with Argentina and Uruguay now ranked the top two teams, so that qualification process in conjunction with who plays at the USA Sevens might need to be altered as it doesn’t make much sense right now.

What we are likely to see now in South America is that Brazil will now become a power.

I think this will happen pretty quickly with the 2016 Olympics the obvious overriding factor. With Uruguay qualified for next year’s USA Sevens and Brazils probable emergence, Chile’s involvement on the IRB Sevens in the future is a little bit unclear.