Looks like joining the tri nations worked for Argentina.

God help the rugby world when Argentina develop their own professional league.

I now know what yesterday was...

1. The Welsh management may have forgotten that Argentina are a good side and MAY have improved during their exposure to the rugby championship. They completely underestimated them and assumed the autumn internationals would be 2 easy games and 2 hard games.

2. The players also thought it would be easy and only went into the match with one basic game plan. This reminds me of Paris 2009 when everyone assumed a 2nd grandslam was inevitable. France raised their game and Wales spent the ENTIRE match in their own 22 completely devoid of ideas, just like yesterday.

3. Fly half insanity:

Our best back is James Hook. Our best 10 is Bigger. Our future 10 is Matthew Morgan. Tovey is also worth a chance.

Why do we keep selecting crap? Priestland to Roberts works some of the time but not all of the time. We need a 10 with a sharper rugby brain and we certainly miss a Henson/Hook type player at 12. We definitely missed JD2 yesterday.

4. It's also evident to see how much influence Gatland has over them. They really do raise their game for him. Yesterday the squad played like they were playing for Phil Davies at the Blues.

I think the benefit Argentina had fromthe Rugby championship was fitness, physicality and adapting to a faster game.

The biggest asset for me in international rugby is the ability to do things faster, it creates less space for the opposing team on attack, more momentum for you team on attack, you can close gaps quicker and control a match better.

Argentina still plays very borderline offside in the rucks and also with thier backline on defence.

Yet they manage to do it in a manner that goes unnoticed for most oarts of the game.

Their skill in the back line has also improved significantly.

Well said Bill.

RogerLewis wrote:
4. It's also evident to see how much influence Gatland has over them. They really do raise their game for him.

In that case drop the Frak lot of them!!!! If you think that they cant raise there game to the highest level after putting on that red shirt, then they dont deserve to wear it.

If thats the Welsh players mentality i dont want any of them near the Lions side.

And i would feel the same if it was an England player as well

Unfortunately it's true. No excuses yesterday. If they wanted it badly they would have at least been a bit more creative.

McCusker deserves to be shot. That get out of jail moment could have turned the match.

I dont buy the notion that the 4N have helped Argentina so much that they managed to beat Wales.

Argentina just needed regular game time together. If they'd participated in the 6 Nations instead of Four Nations, they'd have benefited from it.

They've been a good side for some time; they just needed time together to prove it.

can we just fuse the 6Ns and the 4Ns to make the 10Ns? ...Oh wait that's pretty much the world cup quarter finals...

I suspect that if Fiji and Samoa could play in the 4N and make it a Southern 6N, the Autumn Internationals would be an even more sorrowful experience for Northern Hemisphere teams.

Fiji are collapsing at the moment aren't they? Tonga seem to be the other PI team on the rise.

didnt fiji beat tonga recently?

HQ matt wrote:didnt fiji beat tonga recently?

Yeah, in the PNC but you don't want to bring facts into this do you?

like someone else said, argentina have been a good side for some time, they have regularly beaten the french for years. The impact of the rugby championship remains to be seen, if argentina go on to beat france and ireland this autumn then we can start talking about a revolution.

i dont think wales will be that poor again this autumn.