01-08-2025
Argentine rugby's Queenstown link
Pumas assistant coach Kenny Lynn returns to Argentina next month where they'll play back-to-back Tests against the All Blacks. PHOTO: JAMES ALLAN PHOTOGRAPHY
You appreciate how global international rugby's become when one of Argentina's assistant coaches lives in Queenstown.
Former Southland Stag and Highlander utility back Kenny Lynn, 42, and his family shifted to Arrow Junction six months ago, after initially moving to Dunedin from France last year.
He'd originally moved to France to play for Lyon in 2014 when it was still in the second division.
Battling injury in his second year, he joined Lyon's coaching team and eventually became head coach of what's now an established Top 14 side.
Last year he joined the Dunedin-based Highlanders as their attack coach, but, only one year into a three-year contract, accepted Pumas coach Felipe Contepomi's out-of-the-blue offer to join his coaching team.
"When he first put it to me I obviously thought, 'well, we can't', because we'd just moved from France to New Zealand, we didn't want to move the kids all the way over to Argentina.
"But when he said, 'no, it's fine, you can do it from NZ, we'll just fly you over for every Test series', then we just had to work out the calendar and if it was possible with the family and [wife] Becs and her work."
Coming in last year as a backs and attack coach, mainly, the Pumas had a good '24, beating the All Blacks, Springboks and Wallabies in one Rugby Championship season for the first time — and so far they're the only team to have beaten this year's British and Irish Lions, in a warm-up game in Dublin.
Along with the Pumas' other coaches, Lynn's contracted to the end of the 2027 Rugby World Cup, and says his job entails just being with the team about four months a year, working remotely the rest of the time.
Though learning Spanish, he says their coaches' meetings are all conducted in French — "my Spanish is still a work-on and one of the coaches' English is a real work-on, but all four of us can speak French".
As for their Queenstown move, "we were looking at maybe staying in Dunedin and getting a place over here to come in the summers, but we thought, 'why not just give it a go?"'
The advantage is Becs' parents live in Queenstown — her dad's legendary former Southland breakfast radio host John 'Boggy' McDowell — and aside from the international airport also being handy, "we'd always wanted to be around here".
So far they're loving it — his 8-year-old twin boys play Arrowtown junior rugby, while he's also popped along to two of the Arrowtown Premiers trainings.
"In the summer I might be able to help out a little bit more, but we'll see."
