AIMING TO GO OUT ON A HIGH
Pumas legend Lobbe has Ireland in his sights
ANOTHER of t he great Test careers is near an end. Juan Martin Fernandez Lobbe will pray that his time in the international arena does not end in the unpleasant circumstances that attended Paul O’Connell’s departure. But Argentina supporters will pray even harder for it.
Lobbe has been a l eader in Argentina’s rise to the elite level of Test rugby. He is one of the dogged survivors of their golden generation, a link to the adventure of eight years ago, a survivor of the lean times since and an inspiration in their climb back towards the top.
The 34-year- old has not definitively declared his 11-year Test career will end with Argentina’s involvement here, but it looks inevitable. An Argentinian franchise will play in the Super Rugby competition from next February.
As is the way of rugby administrators, the Argentinian Union are said to be demanding that anyone who wishes to play for the national team must play for the franchise, the first professional rugby side in Argentina.
‘At the moment these are the last few games for me,’ said Fernandez Lobbe at the start of the World Cup.
‘That’s why I am really enjoying them, because I have a contract with Toulon until June 2017. When I signed, we had an idea (about the new franchise), but I’ve been lucky enough to play a lot of years with the national team. This is my third World Cup, and I don’t see myself playing in a fourth one so also it’s time for everybody else to start developing.’
The Super Rugby move will benefit the national team in the way their arrival into the Rugby Championship has done, and the 2019 tournament holds great promise as a result. For 2015, though, just as in 1999, 2003, 2011 and 2015, they must depend on the deeds of great players who earn their living abroad.
Fernandez Lobbe ranks with the very best of them, and he will be recalled as the man who led Argentina into their first Rugby Championship in 2012 as captain.
The Pumas have dipped from the great heights of 2007. They were a magnificent team, and so many of their best players were playing in England and France that there was serious agitation for including Argentina in European Test competition by expanding the Six Nations to seven.
Felipe Contepomi was in Ireland with Leinster, Fernandez Lobbe was at the time starring for Sale, but they could also rely on Mario Ledesma, the marvellous Patricio Albacete of Toulouse and Agustin Pichot at scrum half.
Fernandez Lobbe was 25 in that tournament and excelled as part of a side whose power was channelled through its pack. The years following their astonishing thirdplace finish at that World Cup brought decline but they have risen again, and with a more varied style now.
He played through the years when Ireland’s rivalry with Argentina was at its most rancorous. Donncha O’Callaghan, Ronan O’Gara and Denis Leamy were leading players on the Irish side of hostilities in the seasons when relations between the teams dipped lowest, 2007 and 2008.
Contepomi was an enthusiastic participant at the South American end of the feud, and Fernandez Lobbe was never backwards when it came to confronting a green shirt.
Argentina won the big one, hammering Ireland in the final pool game eight years ago to send Eddie O’Sullivan’s team home, as the Pumas went on to reach the last four.
A year later, Ireland squeaked past a greatly reduced Argentina side at Croke Park in a match that was vital in maintaining the home country’s world ranking ahead of the 2011 pool draw.
Fernandez Lobbe was captain of the visitors that day and he afterwards spoke like the vanquished gunslinger in a western, vowing he and his players would be avenged.
‘They won this time but there will be revenge,’ declared Lobbe, whose first Test as captain had ended in defeat. It was all somewhat overwrought, but Argentina were in a time of transition then, with senior players nearing an end and a new generation still being nurtured through.
It was clear, too, that their traditional pugnacity was not enough to maintain them as a tier- one force.
It wasn’t until their accession to the Rugby Championship that a more subtle style could be practised and introduced in high-calibre conditions.
Fernandez Lobbe joined Sale in 2006, captaining the club for a season and playing alongside his brother Ignacio. He played under Philippe Saint Andre at the Manchester club but they could not repeat the Premiership Rugby title success, achieved the season before Fernandez Lobbe joined.
He followed Saint Andre to Toulon in 2009 and his reputation as one of the game’s best loose forwards has grown in the south of France.
The finest competition money can buy guarantees ceaseless competition in the Toulon squad, and Fernandez Lobbe had to satisfy himself with a place on the bench for this year’s European Cup final win against Clermont after starting the 2013 and 2014 victorious deciders.
Of his 68 caps, only two have come as a replacement and one of those was last weekend against Namibia.
Argentina have been husbanding their resources since that tremendous effort against New Zealand on the opening weekend of the competition.
They have had three weeks to ease through the fixtures and wait for either Ireland or France to stagger out of Pool D. Now is their time.
Fernandez Lobbe could tell his younger countrymen that this is their best chance of a World Cup upset since 2007.