In 1959, the Junior Springboks had toured to Argentina, where they played a series of friendly matches. The South Africans were impressed by the rugby environment in the country and their visit paved the way for the trip of the Argentine team. As a result, in 1964 the South African Rugby Union sent an invitation to the UAR to send a representative team there. The SARU wanted a foreign team to play there with the purpose of spreading the practise of rugby in South Africa. South AfricanDanny Craven served as adviser for the team to prepare the tour, while the SA Union sent Izak van Heerden to help the Argentine Rugby Union to prepare the tour and collaborate with coaches Alberto Camardón and Angel Guastella. The national team played a series of preparatory games before the tour, facing local clubs and provincial representatives such as Universitario Obras Sanitarias, Alumni, Newman, Córdoba RU, Rosario RU, Duendes and Old Georgian The first two matches in South Africa were extremely hard for the Argentine squad, in disadvantage on the physical power and the tough play by their rivals. Nevertheless, Argentine players vowed themselves to change the history from then on. The "key game" of the tour was the match v. Southern Universities won by Argentina 22–6. The local media entitled "Argentina shattered the craddle of South African rugby" after that match. Nevertheless, Argentina's most relevant victory was against the Junior Springboks –the South African second national team– to whom they defeated 11–6 at Ellis Park. Argentina lineup for that match was Cazenave, Neri, Pascual, Rodríguez Jurado, España; Poggi, Etchegaray; Loyola, Silva, Scharenberg; Schmidt, Otaño; Foster, González del Solar y García Yáñez. The photo showing centre Marcelo Pascual diving to the rival ingoal became iconic for Argentine rugby. The Pumas nickname is the result of an error made by Carl Kohler, a journalist for the Die Transvaler newspaper in South Africa, while following the team during the tour. He tried to devise a catchy nickname for the team similar to existing international team nicknames such as All Blacks, Springboks, and Wallabies. Kohler was aware that the Americas had pumas, and as he was under pressure to submit his article, made a guess and called them "the Pumas", instead of the actual jaguar. The mistake stuck, and was eventually adopted by the Argentines themselves.
The tour is considered the birth of the modern "Pumas" because of the national team had not achieved great results until then. The victory v the Junior Springboks was widely covered by the Argentine media and it is considered a turning point for the national team. In an interview for the 50th anniversary of the tour, Héctor Silva stated: About the first matches, Heriberto Handley said in the same interview: "Coco Benzi" added:
Southern Rhodesia 
Junior Springboks