As the saying goes: the show must go on. Much like everyone else in England, I woke up this morning having to come to terms with the fact that our team has become the first World Cup host to go out in the pool stages. And that is with one game still to play, and 13 other pool games still to be contested. Indeed, the venue of today’s game between Tonga and Argentina – Leicester – has only just joined the World Cup party. Having said this, they definitely could have sold a few more for the King Power stadium today. This battle was essentially a knockout decider, and it was certainly played in that spirit as both Tonga and Argentina Rugby hunt a quarter final spot. The victory for Argentina has put them in an almost unassailable position to reach this, assuming they do not slip up against Namibia.
Argentina looked good for the win today, and will be stiff competition for either France or Ireland. They overcame a very motivated Tonga side, who, according to Siale Piutau, had “this wolf pack mentality that is going to take on the Pumas and it’s going to be an all-out battle, all-out war”. The opening defeat to Georgia had certainly focused the minds of the smallest nation in the World Cup. The Sipi Tau was the initial demonstration of that – intense as ever – as were a couple of high tackle penalties conceded very early on. However, after seven minutes they built an attack and Kurt Morath dived over for the opening try, hitting the post with the conversion attempt. The Tongans then won a massive scrum and built another attack. This was obviously not going to be simple for Los Pumas.
Argentina did, however, get themselves back into the game with a Sanchez penalty, which was followed by getting over the try line twice within a matter of seconds. Their second try may well be the best we will see in this tournament. The Tongan line was cut open, and the ball went through the hands across the pitch to make it 17-5. A string of turnovers had allowed The Pumas to get themselves on top, although with yet another turnover and a reverse of momentum, Tonga were allowed back into the game via a Veainu break and offload to the unlikeliest of support runners, prop Soane Tonga’uiha. Morath again missed the conversion, leaving a half time score of 20-13 to Argentina.
A trading of penalties early in the second half, as well as further misses from the tee by Morath, took us into a tight final quarter. The more accurate boot of Nicolas Sanchez took the score to 26-16, before Veainu brilliantly held up a potential Argentinian try under the posts. Tonga then turned over the five metre scrum, but proceeded to lose the ball and Sanchez went over for the pivotal score. This mistake had come from Opeti Fonua attempting to run over his tackler, rather than continue the running game that had served the Pacific Islanders well. Instances like this are the reason that they lost to Georgia, and the side repeated the same mistake here. The Argentinian supporters soon got into full voice, although they weren’t bouncing as much as at Kingsholm last week, which is credit to Tonga. A smart lineout play brought the bonus point, with a brilliant touchline conversion from the impressive boot of Sanchez. The icing on the cake came with the final play of the game, when Santiago Cordero capitalised on an overlap to cross for the fifth try.
In the end, Tonga were not able to keep up the intensity in the second half, and the superiority of technical skills from Argentina shone through.
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