Felipe Contepomi alighted on familiar touchstones, gently directed to matters Leinster, Leo Cullen, Johnny Sexton, Sam Prendergast and Irish rugby during a press conference to announce the Argentina team for Friday night’s Test match against the Lions at the Aviva Stadium (8pm).
While it would be overstating matters a tad to suggest that it’s a game between two scratch sides, Argentina are without a host of the French-based players including Toulouse trio Juan Cruz Malliá, Santiago Chocobares and Efrain Elias, Bordeaux’s Guido Petti and Facundo Bosch, along with Rodrigo Bruni, Matteo Carreras, Bautista Delguy, Marcus Kremer and Facundo Isa to highlight another half-dozen absentees.
Centre Justo Piccardo will make his debut while three of the bench share those circumstances. but for the Irish media contingent Contepomi’s thoughts on a number of parochial matters superseded any chat about Friday night’s game.
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Leinster’s head coach Cullen rocked up to the Pumas training on Tuesday, a chance to catch up for the former team-mates and friends, who worked with the province in a coaching capacity too. Contepomi would still have skin in the game emotionally when it comes to Leinster.
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He pushed back a little when it was suggested that the URC title win at Croke Park ended a four-year cycle of disappointment. “Yeah, well, depending on how you see the disappointment, you know, playing finals, every season, I don’t see it as a disappointing season.
“Maybe it’s a disappointing day, you know, when you lose a final, but the season probably, it’s a good season. I feel lucky Leo came yesterday to our training, so I caught up with him. I still keep in contact with him, and I’m delighted for Leinster.
“To get that silverware, more so to because they were the best team throughout the season and I think they were the best team last year [too], but they didn’t win it. It’s good to have silverware. Some players who contributed a lot are leaving, it’s very good for them to leave with a medal.”
Contepomi was asked about two Leinster outhalves, Prendergast the incumbent in the 10 jersey, and his predecessor, Sexton, who has taken up a coaching role with the Lions and will fulfil a similar role with Ireland later in the year.
“I think Sam was lurking around in the academy before I left. I could see his talent coming through, I didn’t have to be a rugby brain to detect that he was a talented player. I think he’s very talented. It’s probably debatable and [he’s] probably unlucky to have to miss out [on] the Lions, but he’s a very young player and he will have a lot of opportunities.
“The Lions from what I recall, they never finished with the same [number of players], whatever 40 something players they have, they never finished the tour with the same [number] who started. So, you need to be ready and I’m sure he’s on the fringe of that. So, I don’t know, I’m just assuming, right? I don’t have inside information.”
So was Contepomi surprised that Sexton has grabbed a whistle and tracksuit so quickly after bringing his playing career to an end? The Argentinian smiled: “I don’t know if surprised, I’m delighted. I think he needed to go into rugby.
“He has a good rugby brain, a very good rugby brain and I’m sure that he will have very good mentors there. He knows [Andy] Farrell, he knows a lot of the staff, and I’m sure that he will get the most out of that experience.
“I think Irish rugby has improved massively in the last 20 years. They have got a really good balance on developing young players and having the home talent.
“Obviously, they could have a few talents from abroad like Lowey [James Lowe], [Jamison] Gibson-Park and Bundee [Aki], they have bought into the Irish culture very well. I think Ireland has been doing the right things on and off the pitch.”
Friday night’s game poses a series of questions for the respective head coaches but it’s one that Contepomi is happy to embrace. “In in our case we haven’t been together for seven months and getting together in two training sessions with a lot of new faces. It’s been a challenge, but the guys have been magnificent.
“They made a lot of effort to grab all that new information. There was a good adaptation. We will see in the game, but we are very pleased with how they adapted to the first week in terms of the newcomers.
“In terms of preparing a game against a team that you don’t know what they will fire [at us], for us it is very good because we need to focus on us. It’s been good to really focus on what we want to do, how we want to do it, for them to start understanding the habits that we want to instil in our group.”
ARGENTINA: Santiago Carreras; Rodrigo Isgró, Lucio Cinti, Justo Piccardo, Ignacio Mendy; Tomás Albornoz, Gonzalo García; Mayco Vivas, Julian Montoya (capt), Joel Sclavi; Franco Molina, Pedro Rubiolo; Pablo Matera, Juan Martin Gonzalez, Joaquin Oviedo.
Replacements: Bautista Bernasconi, Boris Wenger, Francisco Coria Marchetti, Santiago Grondona, Joaquin Moro, Simón Benitez Cruz, Matias Moroni, Santiago Cordero.
