I think the coach Marcelo Loffreda based his players selection on three principal items:

1.        Experience

2.        Strength

3.        Politics

The experience can be seen on the forwards, since their average age is around 30 years old, to this I object that although these players have experience, they have been injured too many times, in fact most of them have spent their time more than once in the doctor.

As a positive issue, these players have played in the best teams of Europe.

Strength: in the Backs, since they are young and experienced due to their presence on english and french rugby leagues.

Politics: since many of the players, I consider, can only be in their position due to political pressure.  An example of this is Sporleder, a player that did not play throughout the whole year, that is 35 years old and have never been outstanding. 

Manuel Contempomi, to give another example, I cannot say he wasn’t a good player, but after his injure he never return to the same level, nevertheless he was still convocated… has his brother got something  to do with this perhaps?? 

Quesada again is another example of someone that was not in the coach’s plans, but because of the fans’ pressure and his match on December 2002, where Felipe Contempomi played really bad, he managed to enter in the team.

Well, from Argentina, this is my opinion about the team situation.

About Argentinian performance in the world championship, I have to say I am clueless. Los Pumas is a very temperamental team and they can play at the same level with the bests but can also be defeated badly with second class teams.  I hope we achieve a similar performance that we had on the past championship, with a bit of attitude we can sure reach the playoff.

I would also like to say that I am totally in disagree about how the world ranking was made: Last world cup we reach the fifth place, but it seems the IRB consider us to be in the seventh place.  In this way we have to play against Australia where we, according to our performance on the last championship and also due to that we qualified first in America, we should be zone leaders as well as Australia. 

If you would like my opinion on each player, just post a question on the discussion board and I'll try let you know.