England v Argentina, 5:30 am, 10th September

Present: Richard, Vero, Mecha, Neto, Wes, Cameron, Jon, Elisa, myself.

Pre-match expectations: a good clean game. Some decent rugby. A lot of insanely biased commentary from the Argentine ESPN+ crew.

Prediction: a resounding win to England by at least 30 points.

Game: a lot of expectation riding on this so we’ve invited as many Argentines as possible, eg three. Two of them turn up (Vero & Mercedes), on the tail-end of a night out. Much geo-political banter ensues.

Half time status: Neto’s asleep. Argentina have given everything and are three points up, although as many players have been taken off. England look lost. Not bad, but not there. Some highly interpretative decisions by the referee and rubbish kicking by Jonny Wilkinson led to both teams limping off the field at 6-3 to Argentina.

Full-time status: Twenty more minutes of attritional rugby and rubbish kicking finally see a breakthrough for England through Ben Youngs and his try. Wilkinson finally sees a conversion go through (in front of the posts) and the tension is relieved. That was unbearable for a while. The Argentines look deflated. What could have been a famous victory ends up a limping semi-embarrassment for both teams: a win’s a win for England, but that was miserable, while Argentina stuffed upwards of 7 penalties and lost three of their best players in aid of… a 13-9 defeat. On the plus side, Neto woke up.

Man of the match: probably Ben Youngs, for coming on when allegedly injured and scoring a winning try. Nobody else really deserved it.

Food: a curry, slow-cooked over almost a day, containing roast squash, onion, roast chicken, cumin, cinnamon, garam masala, tandoori spices, chili, yoghurt, cream. Well tasty. [Slaps own back]

Conversation keywords: as stated previously, a lot of geo-political banter linked with the relationship between the two countries.

Comments: for about twenty minutes in the second half before Youngs’ try, there was a really tense silence.