The life of the rugby player is very hard, who opens the game in full condition, excited and anxious, and closes it badly injured, lame, sometimes defeated.
Dan Biggar (33) went through all those moods this Saturday: he ended up limping away and overtaken by the Argentines.
Dan Biggar is Welsh, and he had suffered a lot to reach the quarterfinals of the World Cup that faced Argentina. Injured in a pectoral a month ago, the day the Welsh defeated Australia (40-6), the Dragons captain's drift had become a mystery in recent weeks, forced to remain in cotton while he contemplated how His teammates grew in the group stage of the tournament.
“I would feel ashamed if I had to retire like this, without being able to play another minute,” Biggar had confessed this Friday, on the eve of Wales-Argentina.
(Well, he had already announced that his international career for Wales would end here, in this World Cup being held in France; three World Cup appearances will be in his portfolio).
(...)
“Dan Biggar, the number 10 who terrifies rivals with his kicks and his effectiveness,” published La Nación, the Argentine newspaper, these days.
And true to the description, the Welsh flyhalf had been fantastic in the first half of the match, scoring ten points in one go (including a try).
He had done it by kicking as he knows how to do it – shoulder dance, straight back, short steps before shooting – to sow confusion in the willful Argentina, dismasted at the beginning when they found themselves down 10-0, but very recomposed later, in the final stretch. of the first half (it closed at 10-6) and, above all, in the second half, with substitutes Joel Sclavi and Nicolás Sánchez on the Marseille grass.
By then, for that second period, Wales was already a bundle of nerves: its closed defensive system could not block the push of the Argentine offensive, direct as daggers, with penetrations by flyhalf Santi Carreras and scores by Emiliano Boffelli, one of them from 55 meters.
As both teams suffocated and the game slowed down, Dan Biggar's silhouette disappeared and Joel Sclavi grew larger, a pillar 1.90m tall and 144 kilos who, with twelve minutes left, was projected over the goal line. Wales bottom to sign Argentina's first try (17-17), before Boffelli's conversion (17-19).
By then, Biggar was already leaving, physically and also internally in pain, seeing how his body was saying enough and how his equipment was also melting.
In the midst of the bewilderment of the Welsh, unable to understand what was happening to them, an error by Sam Costelow opened the door for Nicolás Sánchez, who launched a clear thirty-meter race towards the try and the point.
For the Argentines, brilliant in football and basketball, this is their third presence in the semi-final of a rugby World Cup, a discipline that they already dominate like the greatest.
