Another weekend of thrilling Rugby World Cup action lies ahead in France and a couple of teams will secure their spots in the quarter-finals, while others will see the dream ending.

As the third round continues there will be pressure on teams such as Argentina, Scotland, Wales and Australia.

The action gets underway this evening when the Los Pumas of Argentina lock-horns with Manu Samoa in Saint-Etienne.

Last week, Samoa opened their campaign with a convincing 43-10 win over Chile, while the Pumas in turn will need to bounce back following a very disappointing performance where they lost 27-10 to 14-man England in Marseille.

Santiago Chocobares - RWC

For the Argentines to advance, they will need to beat Samoa and the assistant coach and former captain, Felipe Contepomi, said they are feeling well prepared.

“Some of their players play in Europe, so they play week-in, week-out against some of our players. From that sense, they know each other quite a lot.

“And now, with technology you can prepare much better in terms of analysing rivals and so on. We take it as a big challenge, knowing the power and the history Samoa has in World Cups and especially in early World Cup history against us. We take it as a challenge and have prepared as best we could.”

This match kicks off on Friday afternoon at 17:45 and it is sure to be a cracker.

Meanwhile, the big game of the weekend is in Pool B where the defending champions, the Springboks will be in action against the world’s top-ranked team Ireland.

Boths teams are expected to advance to the knockout stages, however the winner tomorrow will be guaranteed of progress, and the loser will have more pressure, and that may just be the Irish as they still have to tackle Scotland.

Jacques Nienaber - Gallo

The Boks strategy of playing an highly unconventional seven-one split bench remains a hot topic of debate.

The Springbok captain, Siya Kolisi’s said while they are taking a risky approach, the have full faith in the plans set out by the coach, Jacques Nienaber and Director of Rugby Rassie Erasmus.

“The amount of work they put in with their coaching staff is ridiculous. The amount of information we get, if we play Saturday on Sunday, we already have stuff ready. I always see them seven o'clock sharp, they are always in meetings.

“The information is exactly what you need to know. It's crazy because when we played Scotland I was playing in a game and I'd watched someone's profile and, in that moment, I looked at this guy and I knew exactly how he was going to come and tackle me, and those kinds of things help a lot.

“Rassie gets us as people, he gets us as human beings, he reminds us exactly what we do and who we are doing it for. To have somebody who has also played at this level and sits there and thinks about rugby, but he also thinks about some of the mistakes he made when he played and he is not scared to share that. Whatever you are going through he is always there.”

Saturday night’s massive game at the iconic Stade de France kicks off at 21:00.

Meanwhile, in some of the other games this weekend - On Saturday at 14:00, Georgia will face Portugal, while at 17:45 England will be up against Chile.

On Sunday at 17:45, Scotland will tackle Tonga in Nice, while at 21:00 it will be Wales in action against the Wallabies in Lyon.

Morgan Piek OFM Sport