Curtain falls on Blitzboks’ turbulent season

The Blitzboks shrugged off the disappointment of not making it out of the pool stage at the London Sevens with two big wins at Twickenham on Sunday as the World Rugby Sevens Series drew to a close.

As a result of their failure to win any pool games on Saturday, the Blitzboks didn’t gain automatic qualification to the 2024 Olympic Games and coach Sandile Ngcobo said they were bitterly disappointed with that.

“We are not happy at all, because this is not how we wanted to finish the season,” said Ngcobo.

“We’re very disappointed, but again, our actions will determine our character going forward and how badly we want to fix this, and to play like we’re Springbok Sevens players.”

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STRONG FINISH NOT ENOUGH TO IMPRESS BLITZBOKS COACH

Despite going winless in their pool games against New Zealand, Great Britain and the USA, the Blitzboks hit back with two strong performances on Sunday, beating Japan (29-7) and the USA (47-5) to claim ninth spot at the London Sevens.

While Ngcobo would have been happy with the performances on Sunday, he pointed out some shortcomings that ended up costing his team dearly on Saturday.

“We spoke about urgency and respecting our ball, which we did well at times, but the biggest thing was not finishing our opportunities,” he said.

“We’ve been relentless on attack – we score tries and take the lead in our matches – but then we don’t put our opponents away.

“We wanted to work on improving how we receive restarts and our speed to the breakdown, which we mostly got right, but we need to be more relentless because at this level, you only get a few opportunities.”

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SEASON STANDINGS AND OLYMPIC QUALIFICATION

The top five sides on the overall World Rugby Sevens Series log — New Zealand (who were crowned series winners for 2023), Argentina, Fiji, France and Australia — all sealed automatic qualification for the 2024 Olympics in Paris.

Samoa and the Blitzboks finished sixth and seventh respectively and thus missed out automatic qualification for the 2023 Games.

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