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Foster wary of Argentina at home

Wellington - New Zealand must be aware of the threat Argentina poses when the two teams meet in Buenos Aires on Saturday, says Ian Foster.

With two rounds left to play in this year's Rugby Championship, the All Blacks have already clinched the title as well as the Bledisloe Cup and Freedom Cup so there is little to play for.

Despite beating Argentina 57-22 in Hamilton three weeks ago New Zealand assistant-coach Foster knows that scoreline didn't reflect how competitive Argentina were for the first 40 minutes of that Test.

That is why he has warned his team to be weary of the threat their hosts pose because los Pumas would have learned a lot about New Zealand's style of play, especially in the last 30 minutes of that game.

"They will see some really good things [from the first 50 minutes of the match]," Foster told Radio Sport.

"I guess you can talk about their 50 minutes, I mean we did pretty well in that last 30, but we've got to be careful because they would have learned a lot about us in that last 30, so we've got the same issues that they've got.

"Are they going to carry on playing that sort of game? Are they going to play a little bit more conservatively? They're the sort of things we mull over and try to figure out how they're going to go.

"Ultimately for us, we just want to make sure that we keep our tempo going and we exercise our right options within our game structure and we find that's the most important thing for us."

Having already secured the Rugby Championship title Foster said it was tempting to give some of the younger players an opportunity to play this weekend.

"It's tempting because we know inside the camp, there are guys training really well and jumping out of their skin, so we balance that up with all the other variables we have got to consider, which is we still want to growing our game and keep getting better.

"It's a matter of how we change, and what positions we change to make sure that if we are putting newer players in there, they've got players around them that enable them to go out there and do what they need to do."

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