And Argentina bequeathed to rugby its “bajadita” …

ON THE ROADS OF OVALIA. Throughout the World Cup, Humanity reveals to you, through a return to the roots, the personality of each rugby that counts in 1999.

It was in San Isidro, in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, that the revolutionary support of the melee of the Pumas was born. To the dismay of all the packs of the world.

From our special envoy to Buenos Aires.

CIS. Initials engraved in the leather of Argentine rugby. Indelible mark. CIS: San Isidro Club. Located in the northern suburbs of Buenos Aires, the club holds the record of championship titles: seventeen in the last thirty years. The SIC (1,000 licensed in three senior teams, three under twenty-two, three junior, nine cadets) gave the national team five captains and some famous players: Alistair Stewart, Juan Lavenas, Miguel Sarandon in the thirties, Arturo Rodriguez Jurado, international between 1965 and 1976 who commanded the “Pumas”, Marcelo Lofreda, another captain, between 1978 and 1994, Tomas Petersen, Diego Cuesta Silva – last selection in 1995. In all, 41 international.

But above all, it is those who, from the anonymous furnace of the front jousts, have sparkled at the fires of glory: Arturo Orzabal, Diego Cash, Juan Jose Angelillo, Matias Corral. Men of the front line, rough, seamed: the apostles of the “bajadita”. CIS fellows. The French have gone to the torture of this human yoke, a cilice which crushes the opponent under the pressure of a perfectly coordinated thrust. This event where flexibility disputes with force is stamped “Argentina”, since a certain “doctor” Francisco Ocampo of SIC, invented the “bajadita”, in 1970. At the Visa Cup last July, the “Pumitas” (less than twenty-one years old), inflicted punishment on all their opponents, Frenchmen who conceded a penalty test, finding no other parade but the collapse of an edifice dislocated by the accursed “bajadita”. Such an innovative alchemy can only have been conceived in a revolutionary crucible.

The CIS was born on July 14th. The “sans-culottes night” of 1935, as Emilio Perasso reminds us of when the first “bajadita” was built. On July 14, the players of the CASI de San Isidro celebrated the Revolution by “falling” the panties. The tribute shocked the rigorous leaders who claimed to sanction the irreverent troop. Marris, the “nude ass” decided to create their own club. Thus the city of San Isidro found itself equipped with two teams.

A small step on the lawn of the SIC, the “Zanja” (the trench – a prefiguration of the hand-to-hand combat, way Chemin des Dames) is a leap several decades in time and some 12 000 kilometers in space. The wooden box of the tribunes evokes the outdated charm of Victorian England. The surrounding neighborhood, the residential villas, and cottages remind us that we are in the suburbs, far from the hustle and bustle of the center of the capital. That the soul of rugby is here in the north of Buenos Aires, would not have astonished Jorge Luis Borges who plunged many of these stories in this border area where two worlds are telescoping: the city of business, leisure, and the countryside, the pampa, piqued, here and there, of ombus, giant tree plants, offering to the “gaucho”

It is from this antagonism, this “creoleism” that Carriego, Borges and Marechal sang, that Argentine rugby draws its essence: “guapism” of the cowboys who regulated, like “cumparsos”, pimps and amateurs of tango, their different to the blade of the “way,” and the Anglo-Saxon morgue of the great landowners. This sport, where the physical challenge is erected into law, seduced a well-off youth, nurtured at the breast of the relationship of liberation struggles, full of blood, fury and bravery. A sport of men for latino machos. Bold blend.

The melee, in Argentina, catalyses the energies, focuses the research. When Francisco Ocampo invents the “bajadita” in the CIS, all Argentinian rugby adopts this technique which has survived the fashions that rugby is fond of. The creator who disappeared a few months later, was inspired by the All Blacks, the “dream team” of 1905. Even if, then, the melee were disputed information 2-3-2, the thrust was exerted in the axis, flat back. Ocampo will impose low seat (Baja), synchronized flexion and position of the feet of the pillars inverted. The Pumas pack had to send over the French dreaded heads in 1974, inspiring this reflection to Jeff Desclaux: “Today we learned that the best attack of three-quarters can break on a big scrum. “

Disciple of Francisco Ocampo and absolute expert, Carlos Vilegas, died during the tour of the XV of France in Argentina in 1988, participated in numerous talks on the melee on behalf of the International Board, although the Argentine Union of Rugby was not a member.

Born in San Isidro, on the Rio de la Plata, the “bajadita” belongs and for a long time to the world heritage of rugby.

CHRISTIAN KAZANDJIAN

The first meeting of rugby took place on May 14, 1874, at the Flores athletic club of Caballito. She opposed the team of “Mr. Trench” to that of “Mr. Hogg”. The Argentine Union of Rugby Union (UAR) was created on April 10, 1899. Twenty-two unions, representing 276 clubs, are affiliated to the UAR; Buenos Aires, the largest, has 72 clubs. The unions are in charge of their regional championship. The UAR organizes the national championship, which brings together the champions and vice-champions of all the unions, and the top-ranked clubs in Buenos Aires, Tucuman, and Cordoba.

The Argentinians, commissioned by the legendary Aitor Otano, inherit the name of Pumas during the tour of South Africa in 1965. In 1973, the Pumas beat for the first time a great rugby nation, Romania. They set foot in the world gotha in 1977 after their draw against France, repeated the following year against England. The great figure of then is the opening half Hugo Porta, now Minister of Sports.

Originally Posted: https://www.humanite.fr/node/215651