Afrika delighted to represent SA again
THREE months ago Cecil Afrika went down on bended knee in the wild and proposed to his longtime girlfriend Adrielle Armoed.
A couple of weeks ago, the South African Sevens legend had another rather important question to ask his now-fiance’ when he received a call from Blitzbok coach Neil Powell.
“My fiance’ and I were actually on our way to see wedding venues, check out menus, flowers and all those things when I got a phone call, and coach Neil asked me (to come out international retirement for the World Cup) … so I turned to my fiance’ … but deep down she knew I was going to say ‘Yes’ and now I am here and pretty excited. So, you could say I have got a couple of important ‘Yes’s’ in the last few months,” Afrika told the media ahead of his comeback at the Rugby World Cup Sevens starting on Friday in Cape Town.
Afrika (34) played in his 66th and ‘final’ tournament for the Blitzboks two years ago in Vancouver. He has since been to the US and is currently playing for the Monaco 7’s
team in the Extenso Super Sevens league.
The Principality of Monaco on the south coast of France certainly is the perfect fit for Afrika for he truly is Sevens royalty with the blue blood of two World Series-winning Blitzbok championships (2017 and 2018), Commonwealth Games gold (2014) and Olympic bronze (2016) medals listed among his crown jewels.
It is this vast experience that Powell, who ironically will be competing in his last Sevens tournament too, was seeking when he made the call to the veteran playmaker.
The Blitzboks open their Rugby World Cup Sevens campaign against either Chile or Germany at Cape Town Stadium on Friday at 7.03pm.