Super teams can learn from Blitzboks
THE Blitzboks won their first IRB Sevens title in 2008 and since then have not finished out of the top three in the rankings on the highly popular international circuit.
How have they become a perpetual “Good News” story of South African rugby, and indeed South African sport, and what can the 15-man code learn from these young players that have, well, “blitzed” the perennial giants of the code in Fiji and New Zealand?
In the early days of Sevens rugby, the Bok Sevens team sent to the annual Hong Kong festival was an invitation team of lively runners and good party men. Sevens was a jol 20 years ago. Now it is a highly professional sport in its own right, and the South African players that have won four out of five tournaments on the current world circuit are fast becoming national heroes, and quite rightly so when you see the passion with which they play, but is there something the rest of South African rugby can learn from these fleet-footed warriors?
There is plenty. Most notably is the Blitzboks’ ability to attack space, take on the defence when necessary and then offload either before the tackle or during it. This skill is something that has largely eluded South African rugby for more than 100 years. It is the natural instinct of our players to take on contact, mostly because that is how they do it from primary school level upwards.
The big boys run over the small boys. The game is simple at juvenile level. To be fair there are many schoolboy coaches that are trying to coach youngsters to play like the Kiwis and to pass before contact. You can get away with that when you are a hefty kid bigger than the rest but it does not work as you get older.
In modern rugby, the key to breaking down defences is to slip the pass away in the tackle rather than go to ground. Watch the Highlanders, Hurricanes, Chiefs and Crusaders play. The ball carrier attacks the gap and knows instinctively that there is a mob of supporting players behind him, and he offloads. That is how you break down one-on-one defence.
This skill is drilled into the Blitzboks, a unit that has been professional since Saru CEO Rian Oberholzer recognised the value of Sevens rugby in the early 2000s and established a separate Sevens unit of contracted players.
A Sevens headquarters and academy in Stellenbosch for up-and-coming players followed.
Since then, there have been 30 Springboks that at some stage of their career played on the Sevens circuit. It is fallacy that the two codes are entirely separate and that 15s has little to garner from Sevens.
Besides the inspirational skills of the Sevens players on attack – their ability to make sweeping passes into space and run angles – an underrated skill of the Sevens Boks is their incredible work rate on defence.
In 15s, if you make a big hit, you slowly drag yourself off the turn and wait for congratulatory “high fives” from your teammates. In Sevens, you make a tackle and then spring up and rush back into defence. The work rate on defence in Sevens is incredible. There is no time to wait for a pat on the back.
Finally, has anybody noticed that the composition of the Sevens team is a perfect microcosm of what we want South African sport to be? They are a team fully representative of our country, proudly winning tournaments and celebrating like the happy family they are.
What an inspiration for our country the Blitzboks have proven to be. Their success on the international stage as a tightly-knit unit of South Africans is significant on a number of fronts.