Kiwis spoil Cape Town party for Blitzboks
NEW Zealand produced a shock in the first semifinal of the Cape Town Sevens by knocking out the Blitzboks with a 19-12 win that was clinched by a Joe Webber try two minutes from time.
The two teams were level pegging for most of the way. The Blitzboks drew first blood as a great attacking sweep which initially made inroads into New Zealand territory down the left flank was switched to the right for skipper Philip Snyman to score halfway between the posts and the corner flag.
Branco du Preez missed the conversion which meant that when the Kiwis hit straight back with a good try to Tim Mikkelson off a little switch beneath the Blitzbok posts the conversion, taken by Mikkelson himself, put the All Blacks into a 7-5 lead.
What the Blitzboks would not have enjoyed about that try was that it came while their opponents were down to six men because of a yellow card. The Blitzboks did go back onto the attack after that but, unlike the Kiwis, they tended to make heavy weather of their offensive play.
The Bok pressure did pay off though when Cecil Afrika went over off a tap penalty near the All Black line on the stroke of halftime to make it 12-7.
The Blitzboks were perhaps guilty of producing too many soft moments in this tournament and the ease with which Vilimoni Korai was able to use his explosiveness to beat the first line of defenders and then run two thirds of the length of the field was one of those. The conversion was missed but the try brought the scores level at 12-all.
The New Zealand winner was then hatched by a strong surge down the right flank from inside their 22 and with the Blitzbok defence at sixes and sevens they were unable to prevent Webber crossing from the inside pass and he was able to get near enough to the posts to make it a seven-point game.
The Bok chances of making up that deficit were stymied by a combination of their own errors and strong New Zealand defence and, in the end, the Kiwis were deserved winners and they advance to a meeting with Argentina in the decider (results not available at the time of going to print).
The Pumas overcame one of the surprise packages of the tournament, Canada 14-12 in a close semifinal.
SA might not even have got as far as the semifinal had Seabelo Senatla not made up for an early costly mistake by scoring the try that enabled the Blitzboks to recover from the despair of being behind by 16 points at one stage to sneak a 31-26 win over Fiji in their quarterfinal. — SuperSport