Argentina sticks to its guns on disgraced trio

Argentina rugby management has stuck to its guns by omitting captain Pablo Matera and two other players from its team to tackle the Wallabies in Sydney on Saturday.

The trio were banned this week for a series of "discriminatory and xenophobic" tweets that rocked the rugby world.

But on Thursday reports from Argentina emerged regarding a potential backflip on the suspensions due to player unrest within the Pumas camp.

Wallabies coach Dave Rennie also revealed on Thursday that he was preparing for Matera, Guido Petti and Santiago Sacino to play in the Tri Nations finale.

But Rennie can now shelve those plans after Pumas coach Mario Ledesma officially revealed his team on Thursday afternoon.

https://twitter.com/lospumas/status/1334334512889794562?s=20

Santiago Grondona will start at blindside flanker instead of Matera while inside centre Jeronimo de la Fuente will captain the team.

La Nación, a newspaper in Argentina, had reported the UAR has "backed down and lifted the penalties" and that the trio are "fit to play for the Pumas on Saturday against Australia."

Speaking before Argentina's team naming, Rennie gave his views on the situation.

"We've prepared as if the guys mentioned are going to be playing," he told reporters.

"We've got no control over that but we've prepared as if they'll have their best team out there.

"I'm not aware of that (ban backflip) but we thought we'd always wait until we saw the team. There's a lot of speculation in the media.

"They rested a lot of their top backline last week so I expect a lot of those boys to be back in. We'll wait and see."

The bans related to a series of "xenophobic" tweets that were unearthed on social media late last week.

One comment, made 2012, referred to South Africa as a "country full of blacks" that Matera was glad to depart.

Comments were also reportedly made about Bolivian and Paraguayan domestic workers.

Matera was suspended until further notice, along with Petti and Socino.

Rennie made two changes to his starting team as well as shifting Reece Hodge from five-eighth to fullback.