Manu Samoa suffered their first defeat in this year's Rugby World Cup in France, going down 19–10 to Argentina in a bruising encounter early Saturday morning.

The game, which was played at the Saint-Etienne on Saturday morning (Samoa Time), saw Argentina score first through an Emiliano Boffelli try and then converted his own try and later kicked three penalties to maintain the gap in the scoreline for much of the match. 

Argentina, which suffered its first defeat to England close to two weeks ago, needed to win to give itself a chance of making the playoffs and it did that by going into the break 13–3 up. 

Samoa's flyhalf Christian Leali'ifano had a poor night with the boot, only managing to convert one penalty. Manu's sole try came from Sama Malolo which D'Angelo Leuila was able to convert.

In a rainy first half, Malolo's try was the only time Manu threatened and scored with errors and penalties in both halves of the 80-minute match costing the Samoan side the game.

A boisterous crowd of Argentinian supporters in the stadium ensured the team kept on ticking with a rolling maul meters away from Samoa's try line that appeared to have gifted Boffelli – if it wasn't for a crunching tackle by Ulupano Seuteni that left him in a bad shape and resulted in him going off for a head injury assessment.

The Argentinians put the icing on the cake when 99th-cap veteran Nicolas Sanchez came off the bench in the second stanza and booted a last-minute penalty from the halfway mark to go up 19–10 to send their fans in the stands into a hysteria of celebration.

Having suffered their first loss, Manu will now have to regroup and face Japan next Friday at 8.00 am (Samoa Time) in their next group stage match.