The Argentinians were not in a hurry to get away from the Stade Vélodrome on Saturday night. Their celebrations ran late into the evening on the pitch, where they swapped cheers and applause back and forth with the fans partying in the stands, and then the dressing room, where they danced, sang, and sprayed each other with beer.
Michael Cheika was happy to let them enjoy the moment but the head coach’s mind was already racing ahead six days to their semi-final against New Zealand in Paris on Friday night.
Besides, the players had nothing else to do on Sunday. Much to Cheika’s annoyance, the organisers have refused to let his team travel up to the capital the day after the match, because the hotel they are staying in is already being used by another of the teams based in Paris, and the rooms won’t open up until Monday.
“We asked them, we begged them, but they were too stubborn,” Cheika said. Instead, his team took the day off, and will travel on Monday, which means they will only have three full days to prepare for the game. “And the other team will already be in Paris waiting for their semi-final.”
Cheika said it felt as though the tournament had been “made for the people in Paris” and drew a comparison with 2015, when his Australian team reached the final. “In 2015 we were playing in the same stadium, so it was easy to prepare,” he said. This time around Cheika “cannot implement the normal preparation phase in this short amount of time I have been given”. That, he said, “will have to change” for the 2027 tournament.
For now, though, he will have to do the best in the short time he has. You can already sense that he will try to use the way the team have been treated to motivate his players. Argentina are already underdogs, even without the organisers giving the All Blacks a 24-hour head start on their preparations for the game. Their captain, Julián Montoya, was stewing on it, too. “I am proud of everything we did this week, but next week will be a short week for preparation for the semi-final, and we have many things to work on.”
Montoya wants “two more weeks with this team” and Cheika, too, says the semi “isn’t the final step, we want to go further”. They have come a hell of a way since they were beaten 27-10, by England in the opening game.
“There were a lot of first-time World Cuppers in there and they learned a lot from that game in terms of handling knockout footy – because every game since has been knockout footy,” Cheika said. “One thing the team has always got is lots of fight. Even in that game against England we showed a lot of fight. Now we are in the top four, and anything can happen.”
