Six tries against France and a victory over New Zealand in their last two matches at the HSBC Canada Sevens in Vancouver, as well as an improved finish than in Singapore a week before, pointed to a positive ending for the Blitzboks at the end of their trip to Asia and North America, but the overall performances were below par and can’t be sugar-coated.
That was the frank assessment of Springbok Sevens coach, Neil Powell, at the completion of the fifth and sixth legs of the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series in Singapore and Vancouver, where the Blitzboks saw an erosion of their overall lead on the standings to Argentina and Australia.
South Africa now lead the World Series by only six points on 111, with Argentina (105) and Australia (100) closing in. The Blitzboks could only harvest 23 league points in the last two tournaments, while Argentina gathered 35 and Australia 34 points over the same period. Three tournaments remain, in Toulouse and London at the end of May, and Los Angeles late in August.
Powell was not looking at the standings only in his assessment of the Blitzboks’ performances – after winning all three of their pool matches on the first day in Vancouver, the South Africans lost to Samoa in the Cup quarter-final before rebounding with wins against France and New Zealand to finish the tournament in fifth place overall.
“It was a tough two weeks and not something that we are happy about as a team,” said Powell.
“We will have to ask tough questions to ourselves on what happened and what areas we need to improve on. As individuals, we will have a serious conversation on our performances, but also as a team, where we did not function as we should have.
“The way we finished in those last two matches remains positive, we really turned it around. But that does not detract from those weak moments, and we need to be hard on ourselves to make sure it does not happen in the next two tournaments.”
The squad did not show their usual consistency in performances and Powell said it will need to be addressed: “We had hot and cold moments and sadly those cold ones proved crucial and very costly. It is something we need to look at – the players and the coaching staff alike – to see how and why it happened and what can be done to prevent that.”
Powell pointed to the mental readiness of the squad as well: “This is a physical and well as a mental game and at times we did not mentally respond the way we used to.”
Despite the disappointments, there were some positives for Powell too, which included the return of Fiji, Samoa and New Zealand to the World Series after missing out in the early rounds due to the pandemic.
“They do test you in different ways and areas and some of the young guys in the team needed to learn and experience what those were,” he said.
“You can tell them what to expect, but they might not believe you until they experienced it themselves, especially the physicality in contact areas. We needed to play against them and although we lost two (Fiji and Samoa) and won the one (New Zealand) we can be successful against them if we implement correctly.”
