Elated ambassador Hugo Gobbi has spoken of his pride in Saturday's historic win by Argentina over the All Blacks, and the Brumbies connection that made it possible.
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Ex-Brumby Tomas Cubelli starred at scrumhalf for Los Pumas, helping orchestrate a 25-15 triumph over the rugby union heavyweights and providing a moment of relief to the South American country which has been ravaged by COVID-19.
Los Pumas hadn't played an international in more than a year while several of their players, like Cubelli, had spent almost six months in a hard lockdown as Argentina battled the virus which has infected more than 1.3m people in the country.
"Tomas used to come to my house to have pizza or a barbecue, he was part of our family when he was here, he loved Canberra and he did an extraordinary job," Ambassador Gobbi told The Canberra Times.
"Cubelli always remembers about his past in the Brumbies.
"They have been training in their garage, in their homes because we had a very long lockdown in Argentina so they haven't been able to play rugby for six months.
"The All Blacks were very aggressive because they had just lost against Australia. They wanted to rebuild their confidence and their spirit for the next matches and they found that Argentina was a hard piece of cake."
Mr Gobbi, who has been Argentina's ambassador to Australia for almost five years, attended the match in Sydney on Saturday night.
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"All of the Australians on the stadium were cheering for Argentina," he said.
"There were maybe four or five black shirts for each Argentinian shirt but we saw that extra support from Australians and we were very happy."
Royals Rugby star and Argentine native Pedro Rolando said the win would provide a major boost to the country.
"It's going through a tough time," Rolando said. "For that to happen it shows that good things can happen this year, it's going to be good for society and everyone back home, good news finally."