Time to prop up Blitzboks

An inexperienced Blitzboks team will once again be on duty when they take part in the Perth Sevens tournament Down Under this coming weekend.

It is not the first time over the past few seasons that the Blitzboks have sent out an inexperienced team, which has led to some wildly inconsistent performances.

They have already shown that this season, starting off by triumphing in Dubai, before flopping a week later to finish sixth on home soil in the Cape Town Sevens.

Their inconsistent form has also meant not automatically qualifying for this year’s Olympic Sevens in France, after they finished seventh on the 2022-23 World Series, with only the top four automatically qualifying.

This meant they had to qualify through their continental confederation, but they lost to Kenya in the final of the Africa Sevens.

Their only chance left to reach the Olympics is to win the 2024 Final Olympic Qualification Tournament which will take place in June.

The Blitzboks will hope to build some good momentum heading into that event, but will also hope to have a more experienced team by then.

Heading to Perth the Blitzboks have just three players who have played in over 30 tournaments, while the other 10 players in their squad have all played less than 20.

One of those players has only featured in seven tournaments, three have been to two and two are uncapped and will be making their debuts in Australia.

Where the Blitzboks need help is from SA Rugby, who need to try and step in and lure some of their former stars back to the Sevens fold.

Players like Werner Kok at the Sharks, Ruhan Nel at the Stormers and JC Pretorius at the Lions have all made the switch to 15s over the years, but none are realistic contenders to break into the Springbok set-up.

SA Rugby should try to entice those players back into the Sevens fold, let them still feature for their franchises in 15s, while making them available for Sevens tournaments.