Birmingham: Uruguay coach Pablo Lemoine has freshened up his pack and brought experienced winger Leandro Leivas into the backline for Sunday’s Rugby World Cup Pool A clash with Australia at Birmingham’s Villa Park.
Los Teros opened their tournament in Cardiff last Sunday and showed great commitment and no little skill before being overpowered 54-9 by Wales.
Lemoine has changed two thirds of his front row, bringing loosehead prop Mateo Sanguinetti and 21-year-old hooker German Kessler off the bench to replace Alejo Corral and Carlos Arboleya.
“He’s young but he’s really strong,” the coach, a former prop at Stade Francais, said of Kessler on Friday.
“He has a lot of attitude on the pitch and the team needs young players and they need a place on the team. German is a competitor and he will play a great game on Sunday.”
Franco Lamanna comes into the second row for Jorge Zerbino and Juan De Freitas will play at blindside flanker, allowing Juan Manuel Gaminara to move to number eight.
Both relatively small but mobile, De Freitas and Gaminara will join with openside Matias Beer to try to stop the Australians getting quick, frontfoot ball.
“Australia have a very physical game, with good back and forward play, and they are very fast, so we have to be very careful,” Lemoine added.
The halfback pairing of scrumhalf Agustin Ormaechea and Felipe Berchesi, which impressed against the Welsh, is retained with the only change to the backline Leivas’s inclusion in place of Santiago Gibernau.
Captain Santiago Vilaseca said Uruguay hoped to get a chance to show what they could do on a rugby pitch but was realistic about the challenge facing a team with only four professional players taking on the twice world champion Australians.
“It is a great excitement because we are used to seeing these players on TV and now we are playing against them,” he said.
“They are most of the best players in the world. We are going to field 15 against 15 but we are not the best players in the world.”
