They needed a win like that. For the three points, for being one step away from the quarterfinals, but above all for the way in which they got them. In The 33-5 success against New Zealand, the Pumas 7s recovered their essence. For 14 minutes they were once again the team that overwhelmed whoever was in front of them, regardless of the names or the scrolls. In the last two competitions, and even in the debut in the Singapore Sevens against Australia, Argentina had been far from replicating that momentum. Against the defending champion and always favorite, the best version emerged and once again excites us in the face of the challenges ahead.
A few hours after losing 26-19 against Australia in the debut in an irregular performance (he started asleep and responded at the end to score a bonus point), the Argentine sevens team reacted positively against the All Blacks and rounded off his best performance in the last three competitions. After four consecutive finals with which he started the 2023/24 World Tour, he had been 5th in Los Angeles and 9th in Hong Kong. The victory against New Zealand in the last stage before the very final in Madrid puts them in the race to reach the quarterfinals and get closer to being crowned the best of the regular season.
The quarterfinal pass will be put into play on the second day of action, when the Pumas face Canada at the closing of Group A, at 3:48 in the Argentine morning on Saturday. A win will be enough to get into the top eight, and there is even a chance of finishing first if New Zealand beats Australia. The first two in each group and the two best third parties advance to the fight for the title. After the first day, Australia leads Group A with 6 points, followed by Argentina with 4, New Zealand 3 and Canada 2.
“In the locker room I said that we had to bring out that leader that was inside each of us. I knew that in these moments you have to want to grab the ball and want to go forward,” Isgró told ESPN after the victory. “Sometimes it’s hard, that’s when it’s hardest. I tried to go back to basics and give everything I have, feeling empty. It could have gone wrong, the ball could have been dropped, but I still would have been satisfied because I am empty. I feel like I left everything and each of the boys did too. I’m happy for that”.
There is a play that fully illustrates the recovery of the Pumas. The match began with an error by Rodrigo Isgró when he left in a kick to touch in a penalty, which led to the opening of the scoring by the New Zealanders. Until then, the men in black prevailed in contact, caused errors and frustrated two deep attacks by the Argentines. But after the hard-fought draw, in a stolen scrum in attack, came a hinge action. The Pumas recovered the subsequent start thanks to the foot of Gastón Revol and the flight of Matías Osadczuk, an image that was common in that idyllic passage of the first competitions of the season and had become an exception in the last two. From that recovery came the second trya continuous action of many phases with that mix of control and verticality that became the trademark of this team.
Germán Schulz’s victory with time expired set a tone that continued at the beginning of the second half. Isgró supported his second try and then Revol rubbed the lamp again. “Rodri 4!” sang the man from Cordoba before leaving midfield.. Instead of looking for the aerial game, the drop shot flew low, to the back of the court, almost against the flag. New Zealand saved just enough against the run of Isgró, who also forced a scrum from which the fourth try was born. Schulz’s conquest sealed the match, although there was time for more.
In the last action, after preventing the Maori discount with a pure tackle, Luciano González did one of his, with a mixture of power and exquisiteness: he attacked with pure power and, contained by two rivals, resolved with a pass from behind from the back in the best Nikola Jokic style for the entry into speed of Tomás Elizalde, who put definitive figures to the rout in the imposing National Stadium, a covered stage with capacity for 55,000 spectators (it was empty on the first day), nestled in the heart of this city-state.
The duel against Canada will define the pass to the quarterfinals, which begin at 8 in the morning on Saturday. This is the worst team of the season. He finished last in five of the previous six stages. Only in Cape Town he was able to get out of the bottom and finished in seventh place. However, in the debut in Singapore he was seconds away from beating New Zealand, who tied in the last action of regular time and then won in overtime. In the Argentina-New Zealand preview he gave strength to Australia, whom he beat 14-7 until falling 21-14, a match that was resolved in the last two minutes.
After the ninth place they fell to in Hong Kong, their worst performance in more than a year, the Argentine sevens team once again traveled to the opposite end of the planet to the seventh stage of the 2023/24 World Tour, the last one before the grand final in Madrid. The objective: to retain first place in the general table and finish first in the regular stage for the first time in its history, beyond the fact that it has already qualified for the definition at the Metropolitan stadium, where the eight best will define the champion of the season from 31st of this month to 2nd of June.
The Pumas 7s traveled to Singapore without Marcos Moneta, their most unbalancing player and one of the stars of the Circuit, who in the first match in Hong Kong suffered a sprained ankle with a fractured fibula and is undergoing rehabilitation with the hope of reaching the 2024 Olympic Games in France, the ultimate goal of this season.