Ireland coach slams Argentina set-up
Ireland coach Eddie O’Sullivan has expressed his disappointment in the preparations for his side’s second Test against Argentina at the Jose Amalfitani stadium.
Due to mayoral elections in Buenos Aires on Sunday, football matches in the city were moved to be played on Friday, Saturday and Monday.
One of the matches played on yesterday involved Velez Sarsfield, whose use the Jose Amalfitani ground, meaning O’Sullivan’s side – and their backroom staff – were unable to familiarise themselves with the facilities.
“I’m happy with the players yes, but with the preparations, no,” said O’Sullivan.
“It is not just that we run around the pitch but our medical people need to check the facilities, our media person checks where players will be taken for interviews and our kickers get their lines for the post and the players have a run out.
“They must have known about the football match before now. At this level it is unheard of.
“I don’t even know what the dressing room is like.”
“It contravenes IRB [International Rugby Board] regulations if you want to be picky about it but it really disadvantages our kickers. If we had been alerted to this earlier, we could have gone in during the week and done what we needed there.”
The Ireland coach, referring to media coverage of the first Test, said: “They (journalists) are reporting that there were 70 incidents of foul play that the referee missed. That is asinine in my view. We were all at the game, we saw what happened.
“We are not their favourite country to host it seems.”
“We all try and use our home advantage but we do it within the regulations. There is nothing wrong with getting the support fired up but some of this stuff is off the wall.”
O’Sullivan then went on to call for his side to show a greater level of professionalism after coming away 22-20 losers in the first Test.
“The discipline last week was more about technicalities than foul play, as we had two incidents – Bryan Young was penalised and Neil Best was yellow carded,” said O’Sullivan.
“The penalties I was really unhappy with was the silly stuff, coming offside at rucks and pulling down the jumper. There was twelve of those in the game and we only lost by two points.”
