Battles, brawls and big scorelines - Scotland and Argentina rarely fail to deliver

The sides will meet again in Cordoba on Saturday on the opening day of the inaugural Nations Championship and if history suggests there is little to choose between the pair, it is Argentina who go into the match as the higher ranked team.

Felipe Contepomi took over from Michael Cheika as head coach in December 2023 and has continued the fine work of his Aussie predecessor. Contepomi, a legendary figure in Argentine rugby as fly-half supreme in a 15-year Test career, led them to their best ever showing in the Rugby Championship in 2024. They won three and lost three but that doesn’t do justice to a campaign which saw them defeat the All Blacks 38-30 in Wellington, thrash Australia 67-27 in Santa Fe and then beat world champions South Africa 29-28 in Santiago del Estero.

Argentina beat New Zealand again in the 2025 Rugby Championship, this time in Buenos Aires, and they are currently ranked fifth in the world, above both England and Scotland who are sixth and seventh respectively.

Boffelli had the final say

Their matches with Scotland tend to be memorable affairs, and not always in a good way. You suspect the Scotland players who landed in Cordoba this week are still smarting from Argentina’s smash-and-grab raid at Murrayfield last November when the home side contrived to blow a 21-0 lead by conceding five tries in the final 26 minutes to lose 33-24.

The roof fell in on Scotland that day and the supporters made their feelings known with some uncharacteristic booing.

The Scots were also wasteful in their last match on Argentine soil. In the final game of their 2022 tour, with the three-Test series tied at 1-1, Gregor Townsend’s team allowed a 15-point lead to slip through their hands in the second half and a late, late converted try from Emiliano Boffelli saw the Pumas home 34-31.

Six cards and a full-scale brawl

It was a different story when the teams met in Edinburgh four months later in another full-blooded affair which saw Scotland post 50-plus points against the Pumas for the first time. There was no let up in a Murrayfield thriller which featured 12 tries, six cards, a full-scale brawl, a Darcy Graham hat-trick and a virtuoso performance from Finn Russell who had been left out of Townsend’s initial autumn squad. The stand-off was only recalled after an injury to Adam Hastings.

Russell is part of the tour squad this summer, having not previously played Argentina away. Prior to 2022, Scotland’s last trip to South America came in 2018 in the north-eastern outpost of Resistencia and the visitors flew out the traps. Tries from George Horne, Blair Kinghorn and Stuart McInally had the tourists 21-0 up at the end of the first quarter, and Scotland eventually ran out 44-15 winners, their biggest away victory over Argentina.

Horne, who announced himself as an international player that day, scored a second try and there were also scores for Magnus Bradbury and Dougie Fife.

Argentina like to move their home games around the county but that remains the one and only time Scotland have played at the Estadio Centenario in the Chaco province. In 2022, the Scots were hosted in Jujuy and Salta before the decider in Santiago del Estero.

The last time Scotland played in Cordoba was in 2014 when they eked out a 21-19 victory thanks to a 78th-minute penalty from Duncan Weir, his third of the game. Stuart Hogg and Henry Pyrgos scored the tourists’ tries in a nip-and-tuck affair, with Javier Ortega Desio and Joaquín Tuculet replying for the hosts who led 19-10 with 10 minutes remaining.

When Scotland toured Argentina in 2010 the opening Test was played in Tucuman, a venue with a reputation for hostility whose supporters had a penchant for lobbing objects at opposition players. To be fair, this applied chiefly to when England were in town. Will Carling and co played a provincial match there in 1990 and, with it being their first sojourn to Argentina since the Falklands War, the atmosphere was especially charged. It was reported that fans plucked oranges from nearby trees and hurled them at England players during the national anthems. It got worse as the game began, with bottles, bath taps and scissors all finding their way onto the pitch.

History in Mar del Plata

Things had calmed somewhat by the time Scotland pitched up 20 years later but it was still intimidating enough. Dan Parks defused the atmosphere with a masterful kicking display, scoring all Scotland’s points via six penalties and two drop goals in a 24-16 victory against opponents captained by Contepomi.

Scotland made history a week later in Mar del Plata by beating the Pumas 13-9 in the second and final Test and winning their first ever series in the Southern Hemisphere. Jim Hamilton scored the only try of the game, with Parks kicking eight points. A week later, Argentina thrashed France 41-13.

Two years earlier it had been one Test apiece as the Scots fought back from a 21-15 defeat in Rosario to win the second match 26-14 in Buenos Aires. Ross Ford and Graeme Morrison scored the Scotland tries in the capital, with Chris Paterson chipping in with four penalties and two conversions. It was Scotland’s first official Test win in Argentina.

A young Scotland team went down to a 2-0 series defeat in 1994, with both matches being played in Buenos Aires. Townsend was at 10 for the Scots who were pipped by a point in the first Test and two points in the second.