Argentina's Los Pumas Sevens survived one of the weekend's most thrilling Hong Kong encounters, riding a pair of twenty-one-year-olds through a back-and-forth cup semi-final against Spain to secure a shot at the Blitzboks in the final.
Spain, finishing their own superb run after overturning heavyweights earlier in the tournament, pushed Argentina to the brink. Jeremy Travinic, the Spanish winger in red-hot form all season, scored in the opening exchanges and added another early in the second half, leaving Argentina chasing the game.
"That is a winger finishing with bags of confidence," the World Rugby commentary said after Travinic's first, noting his season-long try-scoring form.
Argentina hit back through Martin Graciano — "lovely feet from the big man and he levels the scores," commentary said — before Matias Osadczuk's quick converted try briefly restored Spanish hopes. A Marcos Moneta-inspired transition moment set up a second Travinic try, and with the clock winding down, the semi-final looked set to slip away from Los Pumas.
Then came the moment Argentina's rebuild has been pointing towards. Captain Juan Bautista Delgado — one of two 21-year-olds in the middle of the match-winning sequence — burst through midfield. Matias Perez Pardo collected the ball, had the support line from Sebastian Dubuk, and the Pumas found the gap.
"Look at the blue and white jerseys flooding through. It goes through the hands of Perez Pardo. And what about that for a support line?" the commentary noted. "A couple of 21-year-olds stepping up to the big stage. This is wonderful. The initial break-out from Bautista and he manages to connect up."
It was Dubuk who dotted down the winning try, cementing a result that keeps Argentina's 2026 SVNS season ticking over after a mixed regular season in which they finished sixth overall. Head coach Santiago Gomez Cora had hinted, in conversations with pundits on the ground in Hong Kong, that Argentina had been rotating squads and saving legs precisely for the moment when the World Championship mattered most.
"I think unpacking that saving their best stuff might look like rotating squads, getting new players, understanding different combinations, and also saving some legs for when it really matters," commentator Tom Mitchell had said earlier in the weekend. "And I think Santi Gomez Cora, the Argentinian coach, has been pretty comfortable about that from the conversations I've had with him."
For Spain, the semi-final loss stings, but the performance — and Travinic's continued form as one of the most prolific finishers on the SVNS circuit — reinforces the Spaniards' growing credibility at the top tier. Tobias Sanchez Trabanger ended Spain's weekend with his fifth try of the tournament in the third-place playoff opener, keeping the Spanish attack threatening deep into Sunday.
For Argentina, the final against South Africa was ultimately a step too far — the Blitzboks claimed their first-ever Hong Kong title — but the performance of a new generation of Pumas, led by the 21-year-old duo of Delgado and Dubuk, was the weekend's most encouraging story for Los Pumas in a World Cup-bound cycle. Gomez Cora will like what he saw: a team that can absorb a world-class finisher in full flight and still find the last action of the night.
