Argentina a step closer to the quarter-finals

For 50 minutes it was close.

Despite an 8 minute, 20 point brace midway through the first half that showed exactly how dangerous a team Argentina have become, Tonga, continuing the spate of impressive performances from Tier 2 nations at this year’s competition, gave the Pumas fits, starts, and for a half-and-a-bit, made things very difficult for an Argentinan team that all but secured their place in the quarter-finals with Sunday’s 45-16 victory.

As has been the case for most of the Tier 1 vs Tier 2 fixtures in the 2015 competition, it was always apparent Argentina had another gear to shift into to put the Tongans to the sword, wrapping up a try bonus point en route in a dominating second half performance. 

And although Argentina still find themselves four points adrift from Pool B leaders New Zealand, their five-try victory at Leicester’s King Power stadium means that barring an unlikely loss to minnows Namibia next week coinciding with a Tongan bonus point victory over New Zealand, Argentina have their place as pool runners-up all but locked up with a game to spare.

21 year-old scrum-half Martin Landajo, winger Juan Imhoff and fullback Joaquin Tuculet particularly stole the show with individual passages of exciting, attacking play that stretched the Tongan defence all game long, as Argentina proved themselves to have more tricks in their bag than just a dominant front-row. 

Tonga, true to their status coming into the game as plucky underdogs, actually got off to the perfect start with fly-half Kurt Monrath touching down after only five minutes following an energetic opening from the Pacific Islanders, although he was to miss the subsequent conversion.

And for the next 10 minutes Argentina struggled to find any coherence to their play as Tonga kept the Pumas at bay in excellent fashion. 

However the Jerichoian walls were to fall eventually, as Argentina finally found a way to puncture the tenacious Tongan defence with Nicholas Sanchez kicking a 17^th minute penalty following an infringement at a ruck in the Tongan half. 

The fly-half’s penalty was to open the floodgates with Argentina following up their earlier penalty with 90 seconds of delightful, interlinking bursts of attacking play that saw Tuculet and Imhoff score within 90 seconds of each other.

A further Sanchez penalty pushed the Pumas’ lead to twenty points to three midway through the first-half and the expectation that the Argentinians were set to run riot in the Midlands gathered momentum with every incisive pass and kick that kept Tonga perpetually on the back foot for minutes at a time.

However Tonga responded admirably, resisting the Southern Hempishere side’s attacks at all avenues – albeit sometimes by the skin of their teeth – and eventually managed to amass some pressure of their own, Morath narrowing the gap on 32 minutes with his first penalty, before Soane Tonga'uiha took an excellent touchline off-load from Telusa Veainu to cap a scintillating Tongan counterattack started by the ever dangerous Fetu’u Vainikolo, further narrowing the deficit to 20-10 just before half-time. 

The every-lurking ‘extra gear’ came into play decisively in the second half however with Argentina running rampant for the last quarter of the game as Tonga began to tire, having played only five days previously. The two sides had exchanged penalties early in the second half before Sanchez, already with 16 points to his name, capped off a man-of-the-match performance with a decisive try on 63 minutes following some flowing attacking play that finally put the game out of reach. 

With Tongan heads beginning to fall as the benefits of the extra days’ rest and Tier 1 status became obvious for Argentina, the Pumas finished their Sunday afternoon off in punishing fashion; scoring two tries (from Julian Montoya and Santiago Cordero) in the game’s last ten minutes to firmly put away a Tongan side, for whom the scoreline was not an accurate reflection of the parity the Leicesterian crowd of 30,000+ enjoyed.