They finish with a resounding victory over a team ranked above them, but there will be a whopping great asterisk next to Scotland’s second win from four this autumn. Quite possibly three of them, one for each player Argentina had missing for a 10-minute spell of the third quarter.
The score during that period, less impressively, read 7-7. Emiliano Boffelli’s try and conversion for the 12 Pumas on the field cut back Argentina’s deficit to 24-22. But the laws of gravity kicked in after that. Scotland responded with four tries in the last half-hour. The electric Darcy Graham finished with a hat-trick and the restored Finn Russell played like the emperor he so often looks, with more than just a hand in all but the last of Scotland’s eight tries.
After last weekend’s agonising defeat by New Zealand and the scarcely less painful one by Australia on the opening weekend of the autumn series, Scotland will not quibble over the details of this handsome win. But the key development came in the 23rd minute, when Marcos Kremer was sent off for a clear-out at a ruck.
In these crazy days when a player can see red for being wrongfooted, Kremer’s card was at least conscionable, given the distance from which the flanker came in to the ruck.His swinging biceps made vigorous contact with Jamie Ritchie’s head, leaving the referee with little option.
Kremer is a huge presence in Argentina’s back row and his removal opened up all sorts of options for a player like Russell. The maestro did not hesitate to exploit the extra space. At the time of Kremer’s dismissal the Pumas led 8-7 through a try by Jerónimo de la Fuente, in response to a fine score by Sione Tuipulotu, who stepped and barged his way over after being released by the match’s first flash of Russell magic.
Argentina’s tribulations started then. After Kremer had left, Scotland scored two tries, one apiece for each winger. Russell as matador created the first for Duhan van der Merwe, and his mini-break paved the way for Graham’s first. But the Pumas would not go away. They scored from close range, with both locks driving to the line. The second attempt was successful, Matías Alemanno’s try pulling Argentina back to 19-15 at the break.
That score would soon prove poignant, for it was those same two locks, the serial offender Tomás Lavanini being the second of them, who saw yellow, one after the other, 10 minutes into the second half. By then Russell had looped round Tuipulotu to set up Graham for his second, but Alemanno was first to go to the sin-bin for another illegal clear-out, this one rather less vigorous, hence the softer hue of card. At the next play, Lavanini dragged down the inevitably advancing Scotland maul and he was off too.
Boffelli scored regardless, a fine breakaway sparked by Matías Orlando, to pull the Pumas back to within two, but that was as close as they would come. Tuipulotu scored his second, Scotland playing for a spell far more sensibly against a team of 12 and working him into the corner. But the lawlessness of the contest was to continue.
After a mass brawl at the start of the final quarter, Ritchie and Thomas Gallo were randomly singled out for yellows. With the game breaking up in more ways than one, Russell set up further tries for Cameron Redpath and Stuart Hogg. Blair Kinghorn has suffered in the shadow of the Russell Affair this autumn, so it was good to see him take a turn as provider when he put away Graham for the latter’s hat-trick.
Tuipulotu became the sixth player to be shown a card, with the clock in the red, when he received a yellow for a tip tackle. Argentina, worthily enough, finished the match with a fourth try of their own, Ignacio Ruiz burrowing over.
“It’s really competitive, world rugby just now,” said Gregor Townsend. “It will be an intriguing Six Nations as we build up to the World Cup. The players just missed out on the victory over Australia, and last week against New Zealand played some of the best rugby we’ve seen from them for a couple of years. Today we all needed the reassurance that [what] we’re doing is also leading to wins.”
