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The Blitzboks’ spluttering start to the new World Sevens Series continued with a crowd-dampening loss to series leaders New Zealand in the final game of day one of the Cape Town Sevens last night.
Going into the match, Neil Powell’s men – resplendent in their commemorative Madiba jerseys – were the only unbeaten team in the competitive Pool A, thanks to an improved defence and intensity to the efforts that saw them finish sixth in the opening leg in Dubai last week.
The home crowd’s expectation would have been that the hosts would win as New Zealand had been upset by the ever improving Samoa earlier.
But, in the end, they also tasted defeat in a game New Zealand forced into overtime and immediately won 26-21 through a Vilimoni Koroi try on the left-hand touch line to relegate Samoa from the cup quarterfinals and earn the Kiwis a last-eight match against neighbours Australia today at 12.48pm.
For topping their group on points difference, the Blitzboks get to play against Pool D runners up Scotland in the first quarterfinal at 12.04pm, with Fiji up against surprise quarterfinalists Spain at 12.26pm, and Dubai finalists America up against England at 1.10pm.
While the game against New Zealand had been a tight and entertaining affair between two sides that played with an incredible intensity, Powell appeared to have stern words for his charges after the game, presumably for their wastefulness in the match.
Playing in his last sevens event before focusing on his 15s career with the Bulls, Rosko Specman had opened the scoring by going blind and stepping a couple of would-be tacklers, a favour returned by the Kiwis’ Andrew Knewstubb.
While the New Zealanders quietened the home crowd by going a score ahead, what would have concerned the hosts was butchering two regulation switch passes that would have ended up in tries, and the kind of missed one-on-one tackle by Justin Geduld in the build-up to the Kiwis’
second try that they would normally frown upon.
There was a typically abrasive performance from Werner Kok, whose try to level the scores at 14-all was a thing of pick and drive beauty, and a dynamic show by Branco du Preez from the bench, which included effecting a breakdown penalty and scoring the try that came directly from said penalty.
But for all that, it has to be said that yesterday was an improvement on their mysteriously listless showing in Dubai, as the earlier games against Samoa and Zimbabwe showed.
Up against a particularly physical and confrontational Samoa with better conditioning and defence, the Blitzboks were patient and worked hard at breaking them down to finally win that match 22-12 after tries by Kyle Brown, Philip Snyman, Geduld and Impi Visser.
The match against scrappy but outgunned neighbours Zimbabwe produced a 43-0 final scoreline, including a hat-trick by Shakes Soyizwapi, a score that would ensure that the hosts would win the pool on points difference.
With the rousing support they have received from the locals, the Blitzboks should beat Scotland, but the Fijians, the newly consistent US, bogey side England and New Zealand still lie in wait.
