The Springbok Sevens team shrugged off the disappointment of not making the quarter-finals at the HSBC London Sevens with two big wins on Sunday to claim the ninth spot at Twickenham as the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series drew to a close.
As a result of their failure to win any pool games on Saturday, the South African team didn't gain automatic qualification to the 2024 Olympic Games and Blitzbok coach Sandile Ngcobo said they were bitterly disappointed with that.
However, the Blitzboks hit back with two strong performances on Sunday, beating Japan (29-7) and the USA (47-5), after their disappointing pool results on Saturday, when they drew one and lost two matches.
"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."
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 the 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."