Battered Wallabies fly in replacements for Irish test
The ARU said Bartholomeusz would replace Ben Tune, who hurt a hamstring early in the Buenos Aires match on Saturday.
Cannon flew to Dublin to join the Wallaby squad ahead of Saturday’s international against Ireland after first-choice hooker Jeremy Paul aggravated a hamstring injury he suffered in training. The ARU said Paul is expected to remain on tour with some hope that he will play again in the remaining matches against Ireland, England and Italy.
“It (the injury) feels pretty bad,” Tune said. “I’ve never done a hamstring before so I’ve got nothing to compare it to. It just felt like something in my hamstring area just exploded.”
Other players in doubt for the Ireland game are centre Matthew Burke (bruised leg) and fullback Mat Rogers (rib cartilage).
Reports yesterday suggested that the world champions were upset after the match, with accusations of eye-gouging, punching and kicking by Argentine players. They also claimed to have been spat on by the crowd at River Plate Stadium each time they ran on to and from the playing field.
Blindside flanker Matt Cockbain claimed he was eye-gouged by Pumas hooker Federico Mendez, losing a contact lens. “He had his finger in my eye,” Cockbain said. “He just kept going and going and I couldn’t get away, and then he elbowed me in the nose and I had to go off.”
Coach Eddie Jones admitted: “This was a very hard match so we’re satisfied with the win. But we are disappointed with the way Argentina played and their tactic of playing the man and not the ball.”
England-based Puma’s scrum half Agustin Pichot returned fire at Australia, saying they were guilty of some of their own accusations. “Australia came here to play negatively, they are cheats,” Pichot said. “We play aggressively, but they play negatively. They pull our shirts and they step on you and they do it in a very professional way.”
Argentine coach Marcelo Loffreda said the Australians went into the match planning to play negative rugby. “The way they played was because of our defenders,” he was quoted as saying. “They are also responsible for a very negative game. They pulled down defenders and we tried to play the scrum clean but Pato (Australian ex-Argentine prop Patricio Noriega) kept pulling it down.”
It was an unhappy night for the Pumas’ Felipe Contepomi, who missed seven penalties. “We haven’t played as badly as this for a long time,” said Puma’s winger Diego Albanese. “We’re very angry with ourselves. We didn’t feel Australia outclassed us but things didn’t work, we lost a lot of balls.”
Hooker Adam Freier and flanker David Croft both came off the bench in the second half to make their Wallaby debuts.
The only try of the match came in first half stoppage time when Stephen Larkham released Mortlock and the Australian winger zipped down the left flank to score in the corner to give Australia a 14-6 halftime lead.
Ireland’s winger Denis Hickie remains doubtful for Ireland’s tilt at the Wallabies at Lansdowne Road on Saturday. He has a hand injury and that could preclude him from taking part even though the injury is not deemed to be serious enough to put him out of contention for the remaining pre-Christmas tests against Fiji and Argentina.
Mark McHugh (St. Mary’s), Eric Miller (Terenure), Marcus Horan (Shannon), Shane Moore (UCD), Gordon D’Arcy (Lansdowne) and David Quinlan (Blackrock) have been added to the squad for the next two days’ training - all of which will be held at Greystones RFC, Co Wicklow.
ARGENTINA: I. Corleto, J.M. Nunez, J. Orengo, L. Arbizu (captain), D. Albanese, F. Contepomi, A. Pichot; M Reggiardo, F. Mendez, O. Hasan; R. Alvarez, I. Fernandez Lobbe, S. Phelan, R. Martin, G. Longo.
AUSTRALIA: M. Rogers, B. Tune (W. Sailor), M. Burke (E. Flatley), D. Herbert, S. Mortlock, S. Larkham, G. Gregan (capt); B. Young, J. Paul (A. Freier), P. Noriega (B. Darwin); D. Vickerman (D. Giffin), J. Harrison; M. Cockburn, G. Smith, T. Kefu
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