World Cup captain James Horwill has denied helping plot Robbie Deans’ demise as Wallabies coach, but admits he erred in playing in Australia’s ill-fated series-deciding loss to the British and Irish Lions last year.

ARU boss Bill Pulver terminated Deans’ contract two days after Australia’s 41-16 third-Test capitulation in Sydney, with Horwill’s performance savaged in the cut coach’s autobiography released on Thursday.

The book, Red, Black & Green, written by Deans’ trusted former Wallabies media manager Matt McIlraith, also documents Deans’ disillusionment at senior players being involved in “clandestine meetings” about the coach’s position in the days leading up to the Test.

“I don’t know about that,” Horwill said ahead of Saturday’s Test against Argentina in Mendoza.

“Not to my knowledge. We were focused on playing and what happened afterwards, happened. That was not our doing.”

While the book did not name names, as such, when referring to the senior players working “behind the scenes”, only Horwill and vice-captain Will Genia were singled out for criticism after the Lions loss.

“It’s disappointing that individually you get blamed, but that’s part of footy – you live with what you’ve done,” Horwill told AAP.

“In the end, I feel like had a very good relationship with Robbie and I don’t think I ever went out there and did anything not to my fullest.”

Nor did he, Horwill said, meet with Pulver or anyone else to endorse a coaching change – win or lose the Lions series.

“I never met with Bill Pulver about anything to do with the Wallabies,” he told AAP.

“That’s the way it is. That’s not my decision. that’s not what I did.

“That’s for the powers-to-be to do.”

The second-rower does now agree with Deans that he should not have played with a calf injury, which, according to the former coach’s autobiograhy, led to the “Australian scrum getting murdered”.

Horwill on Thursday conceded he’d been so worked up by the IRB intervening to reopen a foul play charge against him that, when he was finally cleared to play, nothing was going to stop him.

“The calf injury certainly did hurt and probably in hindsight I shouldn’t have (played),” he said.

“But, at the time, I was probably that worked up about what at happened previously and I really didn’t want them to beat me.

“We really didn’t know the severity until the warm-up and looking back … I was probably pretty stubborn to the fact that I wasn’t going to let a tiny little calf injury stop me from playing in what I thought was probably the biggest game of rugby played in Australia in a long, long time.”