Argentina produced a fine performance as they saw off Italy 37-16 in Treviso in their second Autumn Nations Series match.
Beaten by France a week ago, Los Pumas took control early at the Stadio Monigo thanks to tries from Marcos Kremer and Juan Martin Gonzalez in the first half-hour.
Italy stayed in touch thanks to the boot of Paolo Garbisi, but second-half scores from Matias Moroni, Santiago Cordero and Facundo Bosch ensured that Stephen Varney’s try was in vain.
Argentina had the first chance of points when Julian Montoya earned a penalty for one of a number of jackals during the game. Emiliano Boffelli pulled his penalty attempt wide but he made up for that moments later. Up against Matteo Minozzi for an up-and-under, Boffelli leaped higher and won the ball before offloading to Kremer who was able to power away for the try.
Boffelli converted and then added a straightforward penalty to make it 10-0.
The try of the game followed as youngster Gonzalez showed dribbling skills worthy of his country’s footballers, getting to Jeronimo de la Fuente’s grubber kick and nudging it past the last defender before collecting and scoring.
Trailing 17-0, Italy got on the board with three points from Garbisi, who added another on the stroke of half-time after a powerful scrum.
Having finished the half strongly, Italy needed to make a good start to the second, but instead it was Argentina who struck for their third try. Opening up some space on the left, good hands from Pablo Matera put Moroni over in the corner.
Boffelli converted but Italy hit straight back with Varney sniping over from close range after Seb Negri had made a couple of big carries deep in the Argentine 22.
Italy lost prop Marco Riccioni to a serious looking knee injury soon afterwards but another Garbisi penalty cut the deficit to eight points at 24-16.
Just as it seemed that a comeback might be on, Argentina worked their way back into the Italy 22 and then after a couple of drives put the ball through the hands to send Santiago Cordero over on the right.
And when Luca Morisi was penalised for offside after a kick, replacement Nicolas Sanchez stretched the lead further with a penalty from 40 metres out.
The visitors also had the final say as Bosch, denied moments earlier, got over from a rolling maul to cap off a convincing victory.
