Blitzboks on a mission

Their quest for automatic qualification for the 2024 Olympic Games may be out of their hands, but the Springbok Sevens team will go all out at the HSBC London Sevens this weekend in a final push to book their tickets to Paris in 2024.

Four teams — HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series winners for 2023 New Zealand, hosts France, Argentina and Fiji — have already secured their places at the 2024 Olympics. The Blitzboks and Samoa are now chasing Australia for the final automatic qualification spot.

For Blitzbok forward James Murphy, there is only one thing the South Africans must do this weekend to position themselves to secure their place in Paris: win the tournament at Twickenham. “Talk of Olympic qualification has been somewhat of an elephant in the room lately, as it’s been a goal of ours all season long,” he said from London.

“Some things have gone our way and others not, some of it due to our own mistakes and also because of outside reasons, but we are not going to point fingers, as the results only say ‘Springbok Sevens’. As players, we have to take responsibility for those results. We didn’t do ourselves any favours in Toulouse last weekend, but our focus now is on doing the best we can this weekend, as we’ve got the capabilities.

“We will do our very best to finish first or as close to first as possible, as we don’t want to rely on favours from other teams.

“Automatic qualification is certainly not over, and we will give everything we’ve got this weekend. We can’t focus too much on the other teams, as that could lead to us falling — a bit like a game of chess.

“The better we do, the fewer favours we’ll need and that is why we’ve got a ‘no excuse’ mindset this week as we aim to finish as high as possible. If we can win, the rest will look after itself.”

The Blitzboks will face Great Britain, the US and New Zealand in their pool games on Saturday. This is a tall order, but Murphy says they can atone for some “soft moments” last weekend in France.