Depleted Blitzboks fail again in Hong Kong
Another Hong Kong Sevens tournament, another bout of despair for South Africa.
The Blitzboks managed to win all three of their pool games, but that came at a cost as they lost captain Selvyn Davids and Justin Geduld through suspensions and Ronald Brown through injury.
That left them depleted by the time they faced Australia in the third quarterfinal yesterday evening, going down 0-15 with just 10 players in the mix.
Stand-in skipper Zain Davids didn’t offer this as an excuse. “We trained hard back home in Stellenbosch and have scenarios like this worked into the sessions,” he told the SA Rugby website.
“We were just not good enough in this match, and that is very disappointing. We did not play 100% to our potential — that was our problem, not the numbers.”
The Aussies opened their account in the second minute through a try by Nathan Lawson after an incisive counterattack. Maurice Longbottom scored their second try with four minutes remaining, converting the kick and then adding a long-range penalty two minutes later.
In the earlier match yesterday, SA convincingly downed Samoa 26-7 to finish unbeaten in their group, having notched up wins over Ireland and Spain on Friday.
Shilton van Wyk, Quewin Nortje, Impi Visser and Shaun Williams all dotted down for the Boks, with Dewald Human adding two conversions.
The Blitzboks, with two Commonwealth Games crowns and an Olympic bronze from Rio 2016, as well as four Sevens Series league triumphs, have never finished better than runners-up in Hong Kong, which they’ve done on four occasions, in 2017, 2009, 2008 and 1997. Time is running out for them to find the required form to win a spot at the Paris Olympics at the qualifying tournament in Monaco in late June, where their biggest rivals will be Great Britain.
South Africa were set to take on Fiji in the fifth-place encounter this morning and have a chance at adding some valuable points. Ireland take on France in the first semifinal and Australia face New Zealand in the second playoff. The South African women’s team finished their group winless, losing to Australia, Fiji and Ireland as they scored 14 points while conceding 72. They went down 14-15 against Britain in the final match of the day and were scheduled to face Spain in the playoff for 11th early this morning.