South Africa steamroll NZ en route to LA title
New Zealand have been dumped out of the semifinals at the Los Angeles Sevens after a precision display of knockout rugby from South Africa.
The Blitzboks, who went on to claim the title in an overtime thriller, 29-24 over Fiji, ran in three unanswered tries to dominate the Kiwis 17-0 in a one-sided second semifinal in Los Angeles – the latest stop on World Rugby’s series circuit.
The series leaders from New Zealand, chasing a third title of the season, were never in the contest as they trailed 10-0 at halftime and were effectively shut down by the accuracy of the South Africans in the tackle and at the breakdown.
The South Africans stunned the Kiwis with a brace of first-half tries by Angelo Davids. The speedster opened the scoring straight from the kickoff when he snaffled a loose ball, dodged a couple of ineffective tackles and dashed away for the early score, and a 5-0 lead.
He then bookended the opening half with a second score right on the hooter when Ngarohi McGarvey-Black’s loose carry was punished, with Selvyn Davids knocking the ball free and Angelo doing the rest.
The New Zealanders needed to strike early in the second spell to get back into the contest, but instead found themselves tumbling into a 17-0 hole when Werner Kok completed the scoring with a crisp finish on the back of his own acrobatic bat-back of the restart.
From there the efficient South
Africans tightened their game and cruised to the victory to earn a final matchup against Fiji which went right to the wire, and beyond.
The South Africans had trailed 19-0 late in the first half of the final before they stormed back to send the match to overtime at 24-24 with two tries in the final 1min 15sec, including an icecool wide conversion from Branco Du Preez of his own try.
They then put Sakoyisa Makata in for the match-winning try in the extra period to prevail 29-24.
New Zealand claimed the bronze medal and third-placed points with a 21-19 victory over
Australia, with Etene NanaiSeturo, Akuila Rokolisoa and Tim Mikkelson – in his recordsetting 90th tournament appearance on the world circuit – crossing for tries.
The Fijians had earlier crushed Australia 43-7 in the first semifinal, rattling off 43 straight points as they left the fast-starting Aussies in their dust.
Earlier, New Zealand cruised past France 29-14 in their quarterfinal, running in five tries to two, while South Africa stunned hosts the USA with a match-winning try to JC Pretorius to prevail 12-10 and end the home side’s hopes of a title threepeat.