Rugby World Cup 2019: England snub watching Argentina to focus on possible quarter-final opponents

Eddie Jones and his coaching team snubbed Saturday’s match involving England’s next opponents, Argentina, in order to watch Sunday’s clash between Wales and Australia, to fully scout their potential quarter-final rivals.

Despite Saturday’s Pool C encounter between Argentina and Tonga at Osaka’s Hanazono Rugby Stadium being just 45 minutes away from the England hotel in Kobe, Jones and his assistant coaches will enjoy a day off, before travelling to Tokyo on Sunday to watch Warren Gatland’s side take on the Wallabies.

The move contradicts what Jones has preached this year in saying that he is only focussing on the next game, with not one of his four assistants making the trip to watch the Pumas despite their match coming next Saturday in Tokyo.

One of those assistants, attack coach Scott Wisemantel, confirmed the decision on Friday. “We will watch that on telly. I think Eddie may head out, I am not sure.

“We will go and watch Australia vs Wales on Sunday,” he added. “The rest of the time we are working so we get to watch the games on television or a live feed. “

However, Jones said he had no intention of heading to watch Mario Ledesma’s side.

“I won’t watch that game. I’ll watch other games,” Jones said. I’ll go and watch Australia vs Wales on Sunday.”

Addressing what he hopes to learn from watching Sundays Pool D match at the Tokyo Stadium, Wisemantel explained: “You look at the way teams attack and defend. I am looking for space. That is what I generally look for. I work in patterns. I try to identify where there is space and come up with ideas of how I might manipulate that.

“It’s not so much of where the space is, but there is a trend in the tournament. We alluded to it before with defence and the other one is the accuracy of the kicking games. There is no surprise there. The better teams have better kick games and kick strategies.”

That doesn’t mean that England are taking Argentina lightly, but with four consecutive wins over the Pumas in Jones’s four years in charge at an average of 10 points more per game, England will start the match as favourites.

Argentina will have a point to prove, not just because of that losing record to England but after their opening defeat against France, their hopes of reaching the quarter-finals will effectively be over.

“It’s a huge challenge and they carry a lot of threats, and that reflects what they have done with their systems with the Jaguares in Super Rugby and also their Argentina B team which plays regularly as well,” said Wisemantel. “They have a good system and play a lot of rugby. They have threats all across the park.

“You have your spiritual leaders like Agustin Creevy, but you also have guys who can really open a game up like Emiliano Boffelli at full-back, a very good player. There is a lot of experience, Nicolas Sanchez knows who to move his team around the field, also Tomas Cubelli at half-back – they are a really good team.”

That resonated within full-back Elliot Daly, who three years ago suffered the anguish of being sent off four minutes into England’s autumn international against the Pumas.

"They are going to come out very passionate, they always are,” said Daly. “They've got a good record in the World Cup as well so we'll be definitely wary of that.

"They've obviously got a very good forward pack but some good backs as well. We've played against them a couple of times in the last couple of years so we'll see if they are doing anything differently at the World Cup, but we'll be focusing on ourselves mostly just to try to get our game up to where we want it to be."