NOW THAT REALLY WAS A RIVALRY
Ireland’s old nemesis Loffreda recalls some of his best battles they aim for a f inal f lourish against Portugal
I said to Joe Schmidt that he has made a real difference to Ireland through the small details... the important stuff
EDDIE O’SULLIVAN would never have believed it. Tuesday night in Buenos Aires and there was his old sparring partner, Argentina’s Marcelo Loffreda, with whom he had a tempestuous six-year rivalry, in the middle of Joe Schmidt’s Ireland squad and amicably chatting with Paul O’Connell.
Les Cusworth was the instigator. Loffreda’s key lieutenant from when the Argentine-Irish rivalry was at its spiteful zenith is a member of the Hurling club which hosted the afternoon Ireland training session and he invited along Loffreda for a barbecue dinner with them.
There was no unease, no apprehension that a figure who caused so many problems for O’Sullivan’s Ireland was now breaking bread.
‘We talked about older times,’ says Loffreda, a glint in his eye relating his conversation with O’Connell, a mainstay in the O’Sullivan sides he went to war against at the 2003 and 2007 World Cups.
‘We spoke about the new coach [Joe Schmidt, below]. He was very happy about that,’ said Loffreda. ‘We talked about his retirement. I said “you have three or four more years to play so forget that. You are fit, you’re perfect”. He said, “But the knees…” I told him to forget about that and that he can be at the top level for a long time yet.’
So too Schmidt. Loffreda likes the cut of the Kiwi’s jib and told him as much in another casual conversation that evening. ‘He’s the right guy for Ireland. They were a team with good, skilled players but he has added the detail that turns Test game losses into wins. He’s the right guy to have made all those changes.
‘I said to him that as a Kiwi he knows absolutely what he wants to do with the game and that he has made a difference to his team through small details. That is the important stuff you need to do to be an excellent coach,’ he says.
It’s Wednesday afternoon as Loffreda is talking in a secluded upstairs office at the Buenos Aires provincial rugby union headquarters, a world away from the neverending traffic hubbub on the streets outside.
Truth be told the room isn’t really his office, more a boardroom where he can plug in his laptop oblivious to the faded memorabilia on the walls from Argentina’s rugby past.
He’s still a civil engineer by trade but has spent 80 per cent of his working week for the past 12 months as a consultant tasked with restoring the Buenos Aires province to the top of the domestic rugby tree.
They used to hold an unassailable position but without a title since 2008, Loffreda’s remit is to encourage an organisational revamp to restore what the URBA feel is the natural order.
‘It’s not a full-time job but quite an important one. I’m trying to create a platform for coaches, for systems, for planning, for centres, trying to develop education and development inside Buenos Aires because we have a lot of players.’
Given the chance, though, the 55-year-old would love to rekindle the real rugby romance of his life – coaching Los Pumas.
He’d love the challenge of making them a World Cup force again and instigate a transformation into a more competitive outfit in the Championship, the four-nation tournament against New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, in which they are yet to win a game since their first appearance in 2012. ‘If I have a new opportunity I will accept with some conditions about my autonomy,’ he says, even though current coach Daniel Hourcade only came into the position for last November’s European tour after Santiago Phelan’s miserable reign was terminated. ‘I’d like to take every decision but sometimes in our country you are conditioned because of politics or whatever. I could accept it but I will need to have a serious chat with the officials. There were no talks last year; they just took the Hourcade decision immediately after Phelan resigned,’ says Loffreda (above).
‘I understand that it is really difficult for us to adapt to the new schedule and we have been trying to create a system where we can find better players… but maybe we are trying to change our way of playing too quickly.
‘We have a culture, an identity. We cannot play as the All Blacks or as the Irish or the English. We have to play as the Argentinians and then add some more things that we are learning at this time.’
The talk locally is that Argentina are building towards the 2019 World Cup in Japan but Loffreda can’t abide an attitude where long-term objective is deemed more important than better results now.
He agrees the formation of an Argentine club for an expanded Super 18 would be a positive development, but it depresses him to see the once-proud reputation of the Pumas gradually eroded due to damaging results.
‘We can’t keep saying that we are looking at 2019. That is not clever for Argentina. I agree we do need to construct something solid for the future but we can’t forget about getting results now.
Iwasn’t a professional coaching Argentina. Now it’s different. Now we are in the Championship and have more resources. Phelan earned a good contract. Hourcade also. ‘The players are more comfortable with their payments but because of the Argentine culture, sometimes money creates a bit of problem and we have to make sure there isn’t going to be fights and jealousy.’
Loffreda accepts it is soccer’s World Cup – not Los Pumas – that has the potential to lift his nation in a special way in the coming weeks. ‘Soccer will change the mind of the public and it will be fantastic.
‘They will think only of soccer and that will make us forget the real problems of inflation, of going to the supermarket and finding that the same money can now only buy you half of what you could get six months ago,’ says Loffreda.
‘Those are the real problems and in the last days there have been a lot of things about corruption with the government and we don’t know what is going to happen.’
But at some future point, though, he’d like the opportunity to replenish Los Pumas and perhaps revive a rivalry with Ireland that was box office gold which culminated with Argentina’s unprecedented 2007 rise to third in the world.
‘That was part of the film, Eddie being a tough guy. He was a good coach but also very competitive. I was the same.
‘Our best opposition was Ireland, our mission was to beat them and it was always an arm wrestle. I don’t want to speak anything bad about Eddie but sometimes I didn’t like which kind of strategy and tactics he used.
‘I understand the rules and you can’t break them just to win,’ he says, refusing to elaborate further but refusing to let go at the same time of the tempestuous rivalry that produced headline after headline.
Those were the days.