By Brenden Nel.
The Blitzboks ended sixth at the Hong Kong Sevens on Sunday, bowing out of the tournament with a disappointing 33-14 loss to Fiji.
The Blitzboks would have secured their spot in the season-ending Madrid tournament for the top eight teams if they had won the game, and will now need to get the points next month in the Singapore Sevens.
And while it wasn’t quite the redemption they had wanted – injuries and suspensions hampered them after an excellent pool performance, there were shades of improvement under new coach Phillip Snyman.
The loss of Selvyn Davids to a three-game suspension for an innocuous head clash, which defied logic, hit the team hard.
But against Fiji, they looked tired and outplayed, and were immediately down by three tries after as many minutes.
Shilton van Wyk scored a scorcher of a sideline-hugging try and Kat Letebele continued to impress but the Blitzboks had no answer to the five tries Fiji put past them in the end.
The interim head coach Snyman said, their next aim is to rise back into the top four again.
“It was important for us to stop the slide down the rankings, and I am pleased we could do that,” said Snyman.
“We also topped our pool for the first time in a while, which is evidence of the team’s improvement from the North American leg.”
“We missed their influence and experience,” said Snyman. “They are big moment players who execute the big plays well and we were short of that ability in the last two matches. That did expose us in a way, as we still lack self-belief when the chips are down, something that is a work-on for us in the next couple of weeks.”
With their tickets to Madrid booked, the next tournament (Singapore, May 3 to 5) will be used to fine-tune their squad for the trip to Spain and the repechage tournament for Olympic Games qualification in Monaco in June, Snyman said.
“I am going to use the next couple of weeks to test more combinations and see how that works for us,” he said. “We will have to work on staying calm in those big moments, so we will look at the compilation of the squad and individuals who can stay calm under pressure.”