Blitzboks to regroup for Hong Kong

THE Blitzboks will regroup over the next 14 days as they prepare to win the one title they haven’t captured on the HSBC World Sevens Series – Hong Kong – next month.

The Blitzboks are runaway leaders at the top of the overall standings after six rounds of the 2016/17 season‚ with England 23 points behind with only four rounds to play.

In the early hours of yesterday morning, England beat SA for the third time in five meetings this season in the final of the Vancouver leg of the series.

England won the match 19-7 against an injurydepleted Blitzboks but are still way behind SA on the overall standings.

Earlier the teams met in pool play and the match ended 12-12‚ which allowed SA to top the group and play Canada in the last eight.

“It does seem that we have a problem against England. We will have to go and look at how and where to do things better when we face them‚” coach Neil Powell admitted.

The Blitzboks duly thrashed Canada 36-7 in the quarterfinals and had to dig deep on defence to beat the USA 14-10 in the semifinal.

England‚ spearheaded by try-machine Dan Norton‚ eked out a 14-12 quarterfinal win against New Zealand and followed that with an emphatic 40-7 win over reigning World Series Champions Fiji in the semifinals.

While the final result was a disappointment for the Blitzboks‚ the fact that they made their sixth consecutive final of the season‚ again underlined their consistency.

They have so far won in Dubai‚ Wellington‚ Sydney and Las Vegas and finished runners-up in Cape Town and Vancouver (both times losing to England).

They have claimed 126 log points out of a possible 132 this year and are well set to win their first World Series title since 2009. Powell didn’t view defeat in Vancouver as failure.

“If anyone offered me that [41 out of a possible 44 points on the North American leg] before the trip‚ I would have taken it‚” Powell said.

“From that perspective‚ it was a very good trip for us.”

Turning to Hong Kong‚ the Blitzboks will have to hope key players recover quickly.

“We still need to do medicals‚ but it seems that we will lose a number of players and might need to travel to Hong Kong with a much younger squad. We have some hard work ahead of us.” — TMG