Wallabies coach Dave Rennie has expressed his frustration after a record defeat to Argentina in San Juan.
The visitors were dominated from siren to siren as Los Pumas cruised to a 48-17 win, looking like a side properly dealing with life without Michael Hooper and a near full XV of players.
Purchase your tickets for the O’Reilly Cup and the Rugby Championship
It caps off a fortnight that has seen multiple late changes and season-ending injuries to the likes of Quade Cooper and Samu Kerevi as Rennie lambasted their inability to shut down the high ball.
“Massive disappointment. That’s not good enough,” coach Dave Rennie said after the match.
“We conceded four tries with kicks in-between us and got dominated in the collision area. We created plenty of opportunities but we have to be patient and our rucks not a disaster.
“We just weren’t clinical enough…we definitely lacked cohesion with a few changes. We’ll look at the footage but we’re better than that.
“It’s a massive disappointment. We want to earn the respect of the country but you don’t do it with performances like that.”
Captain James Slipper echoed these thoughts, giving credit to an Argentina side that were clinical with ball in hand as dominant in every facet of the game.
“Off the back of a good performance last week, we really wanted to back it up and we fell short of standards today,” captain James Slipper added.
“I thought the Argentineans were good today and got the momentum behind them from the crowd, they were a tough team to play catch-up footy against so full credit to them.
“We’re excited to get home, it’s been a really tough tour for us so we have the South Africans twice at home now which we’re really looking forward to and being back in front of our home fans.”
Rennie refused to use the growing injury list as an excuse as they were outclassed.
“We would (like to have a consistent team list) but we had a good enough side to do the job,” he believes.
“We gave them a few soft points early on and fought our way back into it. We have to better and we’ll get a few players back. Whoever puts the jersey on has to front but we weren’t good enough.”
Content & Images from – Australia Rugby
