BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) -New Zealand conceded that Argentina dominated proceedings as the Pumas capitalised on a lack of discipline from the All Blacks to claim a historic victory in the Rugby Championship in Buenos Aires on Saturday.
Argentina emerged as 29-23 victors at Estadio José Amalfitani to end the Pumas’ 40-year wait for their first home win against the All Blacks and avenge the previous week’s defeat in their opening fixture of this year’s southern hemisphere championship.
New Zealand led 13-6 with two tries in the first half, but two yellow cards before halftime helped Argentina to draw level before taking advantage of penalties conceded by the visitors at key moments in the second half.
“Test footie is tough when you get three cards and they dominate the aerial game. We just didn’t get a lot of little things to go our way, which is earned off effort. It’s that simple,” New Zealand coach Scott Robertson said at the post-match press conference.
“We put a lot into this week to make sure that we tidied up areas from last week … but we just didn’t execute well enough when we had those opportunities. They did. They were hungry, won a lot of those scraps and fed off the crowd.”
In total there were three yellow cards for the All Blacks, but Robertson suggested the decisions were all marginal.
“I have to look at them again, but those are interpretations from referees that they make at the time,” he said.
All Blacks captain Scott Barrett also conceded that his side were outperformed by their hosts.
“We were under the pump, I guess,” he said. “We had 40% territory and 40% ball; and with those stats it’s hard to win a test match, when the Pumas get a roll on like that. They were a class act and we didn’t quite front up where we needed to.”
New Zealand will next host world champions South Africa in Rugby Championship games in Auckland and Wellington on September 6 and September 13.
“We’ve got really high standards for ourselves and we’ve got to reach them each week,” Robertson said.
(Writing by Mark Gleeson in Cape TownEditing by David Goodman)
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