My switch to prop made me a Puma MY
IWAS fortune to have some very good coaches during my time as a player, but Pat Howard at Leicester has to be right up there with the best. Pat led us to three finals in the 2006/07 season, and we won the Premiership and the EDF Energy Cup but lost out in the Heineken Cup to Wasps. I got to two finals with Perpignan in the 2002/03 season, playing alongside some good players and great guys in Scott Robertson, Perry Freshwater, Manny Edmonds and Tim Stimpson, but everything at Tigers was on another level.
Pat headed up a coaching team of Richard Cockerill, Neil Back and Craig White. Craig was our fitness coach and he had us running and running, we were so fit and strong. Also, Pat had this rotation policy where we’d change pretty much the whole matchday squad every two weeks, which helped keep everyone fresh. Everything was planned out four weeks in advance, and things like weights, nutrition and hydration were all tailored to your specific needs. I think we only lost four games across all three competitions that season.
Pat’s man-management was brilliant; he knew the names of all the players’ wives and children and genuinely cared about you and your family. I got on well with Cockers, too. I lost count of the number of times I babysat his children! He’d only just moved into coaching and found the transition difficult. He worked hard and was rewarded with good results, but he’d get frustrated at times and take things too far, screaming and kicking things around. It was only because he was so passionate and wanted everyone else to work as hard as he did.
Scoring tries was never my thing in rugby, but the adrenaline surge you got from dominating an opponent at the scrum is amazing and I’m sure it feels just as good. Believe it or not, I wasn’t always a prop. I played centre, wing, fullback and then back-row up until the age of 18 at Roca Rugby but when I made the provincial team – I come from Rio Negra in Patagonia – the coach, Gonzalo Vecar Barela, persuaded me to move to prop and said I would have a chance of making the national team if I did. I will never forget the first time I played prop; I couldn’t lift my head for four days. It was in 1995/96 and at that time you threw yourself at each other from about one metre apart in the scrum. But I thank god the coach had advised me to change because I found my position.
Within 18 months, he was proved right as I was selected to play for Los Pumas. Not long after that, I won my first pro contract at Agen in France. I was the only foreigner in the squad, so it was unbelievably hard at first because of the language barrier. But everything was okay once I started playing and could show my worth to the team. It was great to scrummage with players like Jean-Jacques Crenca and Christophe Porcu.
Back in the late 90s, if you left Argentina to play pro rugby overseas it was a big thing. Unless you are a big name like a Pichot or an Albanese, you are forgotten about. So when an opportunity arose to play with Italy at the 1999 World Cup.
My grandfather was an Italian immigrant after the Second World War, so I had an Italian passport, and it was just before the IRB brought in the rule about not being able to play for two different countries. Italy’s coach Massimo Mascioletti faxed me a request to play and Diego Dominguez rang me and asked me to come and meet up.
Once I knew it was clear that I wasn’t part of Los Pumas’ plans anymore, I said yes. I am really grateful to Italy for giving me the chance to play in the World Cup even if we lost all our games.
Unfortunately, I injured my knee just before the 2003 World Cup and I had to wait until 2008 for my eighth and final international cap, ironically against Argentina. We went there and won despite them having finished third at the World Cup the previous year. It was a good and strange feeling all at the same time.
I was playing at L’Aquila when the earthquake happened, and I thought that would be it for me from a playing point of view. But Andy Key got me over to Leeds and I managed to battle through the pain of knee, back, shoulder and elbow problems and extend my career until I was 39. Kiwi, as he was known, was really helpful in starting me off in coaching, looking after the scrum and the lineouts, and I also had one year with Stuart Lancaster, which was very good and I got to spend time with the Crusaders while I was there.
After six years coaching back in Argentina, in Cordoba and Buenos Aires, I’m now director of rugby at ASR Milano. We’re in the fifth week of five of the latest lockdown and I can’t wait to get started again. Rugby is not just my job; it is my passion and being involved in rugby makes me happy. I tell the young players to never lose the feeling they had when they were running around with a ball in their hands as kids in the street. If you stop enjoying what you do, what is the point of training twice a day? It just becomes boring.
“I will never forget the first time I played prop; I couldn’t lift my head for four days”