Third place at the Rugby World Cup looked like the perfect springboard for Argentina to realise their dream of playing in the Six Nations championship.
Instead, yet another season goes by with the largely European-based Pumas watching from afar a tournament they are eminently capable of winning.
While the Pumas had their best ever team in 2007, almost everything else in Argentine rugby was out of kilter with the elite game around the world.
It will take at least another World Cup cycle of four years and plenty of work by the Argentine union (UAR) to secure a place for the Pumas in a major annual tournament, according to the International Rugby Board’s Mark Egan.
Egan also confirmed that Argentina’s likely destination was the southern hemisphere and the Tri-nations competition with world champions South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
“For some time there has not been any unanimous agreement on the way forward for the UAR and this was highlighted by no planning to capitalise on the World Cup success of the Pumas,” Egan, IRB head of Rugby Services, said in an interview with Reuters.
The stumbling block over the years has been divisions within the UAR over how to retain the amateur ethos of the domestic game while building an elite of professional players capable of playing in an annual major competition.
Egan, who travels to Buenos Aires this week for talks with the UAR, hopes the union’s new president, Porfirio Carreras, and the board elected fewer than two weeks ago will at last attempt to take the game forward in Argentina.
He said an IRB workshop in England in November had helped Argentina come to terms with the fact that their future lay in the southern hemisphere, with the ultimate goal of joining the Tri-nations.
“It became evident that there was no prospect of expanding the Six Nations due to the complex nature of the northern season and the fact that expanding it would greatly impinge on the professional club season which would be unacceptable to the clubs,” Egan said.
“The natural fit is for Argentina, which lies in the south, to play in the southern hemisphere.”
He warned, however, the Pumas would not be a quick fit.
“This requires a transition period of planning and development and the first step is to increase the number of Tests the Pumas play while SANZAR reviews its tournament structures,” he said referring to the organisation grouping South Africa, New Zealand and Australia.
“And for the UAR to introduce higher level competition structures in Argentina to build a pool of players, supplemented by those playing in the north, that would compete in tournaments in the south.”
He said another World Cup cycle at least has to elapse, though, before Argentina would be playing in the Tri-nations.
“Broadcast and commercial agreements really mean that the earliest mooted time would be post Rugby World Cup 2011,” Egan said.
“This assumes that the UAR is ready to join and has the necessary structures in place.”
Argentina long ago qualified for IRB funds to help them develop high performance centres and gradually turn the top end of their game professional but Egan said the funds had yet to be released because the UAR “had to show how they were going to utilise the funding for high performance program but they never developed such a model despite assistance from the IRB.
“Hopefully by the time I leave (Buenos Aires) on Sunday we will have agreed on a work and action plan to achieve this,” he said.
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