By Brenden Nel.
The Springbok Sevens will face Samoa in their HSBC Cape Town Sevens semifinal as they moved a step closer to their goal of winning their first home title in seven years with a 21-14 win over Great Britain on Saturday night.
A late try by Dalvon Blood ensured the Blitzboks buried their hoodoo after losing to Great Britain in both Hong Kong and Dubai this year, and completed a good day where they also had pool victories over Fiji and France to stay unbeaten in their home tournament.
In a tight game where it was very personal for some of the players, the Blitzboks took the lead twice in the game, only for the British side to come back at them and score twice to level matters.
But in the end while the tries by Ryan Oosthuizen and Ricky Duartee set up the scoreline, it was Blood’s score that mattered in the end.
It meant that Sunday’s home crowd will have the opportunity to see the Blitzboks search for that elusive title.
Coach Sandile Ngcobo wasn’t unhappy at the effort after calling for a better defensive performance after day one.
“It wasn’t too bad. We’re searching for the perfect on field defensive structure. One of our team IDs is to be defensively dominant so we are on the right track but there is always stuff to work on. We let in two tries against Great Britain and a perfect performance would be no tries, so there is still work to do,” Ngcobo said.
The Blitzboks will face a very physical Samoan side on Sunday in their semifinal at 3:46pm and if they get through that they will face the winner of New Zealand and USA after those sides made it through the quarterfinals on Saturday night.
In the women’s tournament, the Blitzboks Women’s team had a poor day, going down to Spain in their final pool game 17-14.
Women’s coach Renfred Dazel lamented the defeat but found positives. The result means that the Springbok Women’s Sevens will play for ninth place at their home event and incidentally, will meet Spain again on Sunday (at 8:22am). In the other semifinal in that bracket, Japan and Brazil will clash at 8am.
“We were much better today in turning pressure into points,” said Dazel.
“Yesterday, against Australia and Ireland, we managed to put them under pressure, but then allowed them to escape without us putting points on the board. Today, that was not the case and that was a huge boost for our confidence and justified the effort the players put in.”
CUP SEMIFINALS
Men
3.24pm New Zealand v USA
3.46pm South Africa v Samoa
Women
11.24am New Zealand v Ireland
11.46 Australia v USA.