Argentina vs Australia match report: Adam Ashley-Cooper hat-trick sends Wallabies through to RWC 2015 final

Argentina 15 Australia 29

Australia celebrate Adam Ashley-Cooper's third try (Getty Images)

Three things not to do against the Wallabies in a World Cup semi-final, or at any other time: start the game with tears in your eyes; throw daft interception passes in the first 60-odd seconds; allow yourselves to become so narrow in defence, you could fit into a telephone box with room to spare. Argentina, everyone’s second favourite team, committed all of these cardinal sins on Sunday and paid the inevitable price.

Yet they head into Friday night’s “bronze final”, which is not really a final of any description, with their heads held high and their spirit intact. The South Americans recovered from a calamitous opening 10 minutes, during which the Wallabies ran in two of the softest tries imaginable, to give the reigning southern hemisphere champions the mother and father of a hurry up in a second half as compelling as any in the tournament to date. On another day, it might have ended differently.

Who is to say now that they will not go a step further in Japan four years hence? They have the tight forwards to take their game to another level – the lock Tomas Lavanini, still a couple of months shy of his 23rd birthday, is a prospect to die for – and possess the back-rowers to cash in, even if the mighty Juan Martin Fernandez Lobbe is unlikely to feature down Tokyo way in 2019. They also have the game-breakers out wide and when it all comes together, as it did for half an hour here, it takes some resisting.

Few sides resist better than an Australian side with the scent of silverware in their nostrils and sure enough, they denied the Pumas a try. But they had to go to the extremes of bravery and bloody-mindedness to do it. If the blind-side flanker Scott Fardy – the star No 6 in this competition? – and the No 8 David Pocock have worked harder in a Test match, it does not bear thinking about. How they bent so far without breaking will remain one of the mysteries of the age.

Deep in the final quarter, the Pumas were within a converted try of pulling level – a fact that had the Wallabies in such a blind panic, there was a genuine chance of an upset. To see a player as effortlessly accomplished as the full-back Israel Folau fly-hacking at the ball in a fog of confusion was interesting, to say the least.

It was only when the tough-minded wing Drew Mitchell, something of an expert when it comes to making a decisive play out of next to nothing, gathered an unpromising pass tight to the left touchline and beat five players on an infield angle to set up Adam Ashley-Cooper’s hat-trick try with a pass of questionable legitimacy that the South Americans knew it was over. It had taken the Wallabies almost 72 minutes to return to the comfort zone they had inhabited in the opening exchanges, when things had seemed so simple.

During the anthems, there was barely a dry eye amongst the Puma players. This was nothing new – generations of pug-ugly prop forwards who might not be the best company in a dark Buenos Aires alley have shown their soft side to the world at such moments – but somehow, the underdogs seemed even more lachrymose than usual.

They certainly started as though they could not see for looking. Nicolas Sanchez, such a gifted outside-half, gave the Australian lock Rob Simmons five free points with a preposterous pass 30 metres from his own line, only seconds after Mitchell had narrowly failed to capitalise on a similarly generous present. Sanchez made partial amends with the first of his five penalties, but when Juan Imhoff made one of the more peculiar defensive decisions of recent times to give Ashley-Cooper a straight run to the corner, the contest seemed over with 70 minutes still on the clock.

Sanchez reduced the arrears again when the Puma scrum made a mess of the overmatched James Slipper on the Wallaby loose head, but they found themselves a man down, as well as points down, almost from the restart when Lavanini brought Folau to earth with a tackle deemed by the referee Wayne Barnes to have been illegal. Barnes initially appeared willing to spare the lock from the Argentine capital a long walk to the cooler, but then changed his mind and reached for the yellow card. It was a harsh call. Unnecessarily harsh, if we’re being frank.

Michael Cheika, the Wallaby coach, understood as much when he moved heaven and earth to drag Giteau back from French club rugby

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Thus denuded, the Pumas found themselves under siege and finally succumbed when Matt Giteau, that craftsman of an inside centre, hit Ashley-Cooper with the most perfectly weighted long pass off the right hand. It was just like watching Sam Burgess and Brad Barritt weaving their magic in the England back line. Not.

It may be worth reflecting just for a second on the midfield conundrum, which has tied England in such unfathomable knots. This tournament has proved, if proof were ever needed, that a No 12 who can pass the ball is immeasurably more useful than one who cannot. Michael Cheika, the Wallaby coach, understood as much when he moved heaven and earth to drag Giteau back from French club rugby and handed him a senior role in the green-and-gold campaign.

England? They simply do not get it when it comes to the inside centre role, hence their habit of changing the No 12 once a season. They pick one in the spring, replace him in the summer, change their minds in the autumn and try someone new in the winter.

Giteau did not last the game: looking a little groggy, he made way for Matt Toomua early in the second half. But he had done his work and wreaked his havoc, and he will surely be fit for this weekend’s climactic meeting with New Zealand, the Wallabies’ nearest and dearest from the far side of the “ditch”.

God knows, the All Blacks ape the Pumas by making life easy for them from the kick-off, but the Wallabies are terribly hard to beat when it really matters. It is not quite the final European rugby wanted, but it should be a hell of a lot of fun.

Teams

Australia: I Folau (M Toomua 64); A Ashley-Cooper, T Kuridrani, M Giteau (K Beale 46), D Mitchell; B Foley, W Genia (N Phipps 66); J Slipper (T Smith 52), S Moore (capt, T Polota-Nau 58), S Kepu (G Holmes 52), K Douglas, R Simmons (D Mumm 66), S Fardy (B McCalman 55-60 and 70), M Hooper, D Pocock.

Argentina: J Tuculet; S Cordero, M Bosch, J M Hernandez (J De la Fuente 43), J Imhoff (L G Amorosino 17); N Sanchez, M Landajo (T Cubelli 55); M Ayerza (L Noguera 60), A Creevy (capt, J Montoya 30), R Herrera (J Figallo 60), G Petti (M Alemanno 57), T Lavanini, P Matera, J M Fernandez Lobbe, L Senatore (F Isa 48).

Referee: W Barnes (England).