Blitzboks fall short
23 May 2010
Australia beat South Africa 19-14 in the Cup final of the London Sevens at Twickenham.
After an undefeated run on day one, the Blitzboks topped their pool to find themselves in a quarterfinal tie against England. The hosts were tipped to beat the South African team who rarely passed the Cup quarterfinal stage this season, however, with the added experience of Neil Powell, Mzwandile Stick and Fabian Juries, the defending champions outclassed the Poms in the first half.
South Africa were on the front foot in the early stages and camped in England’s 22m area. Ben Gollings was eventually sin-binned after the home team was guilty of frequent errors in their red zone. This allowed South Africa to build an a 12-0 lead after MJ Mentz and Ryno Benjamin dived over.
England failed to settle in the first stanza as they continued to concede penalties at the tackle points. Cecil Afrika exposed a weak defensive effort from England as the Griffons speedster scored from a quick-penalty tap on the half-time mark. South Africa led 17-0 at the break.
The Blitzboks went into defence mode in the second half as they were prepared to hold on to their 17-point advantage. They did well to keep the England scoreless after an early attacking onslaught, but their defensive line was eventually broken after Tom Varndell crossed the chalk.
Powell and Stick were yellow-carded in quick succession in the final minute of play to create an intense finish but England only managed one try as they fell five points short.
The Blitzboks continued their winning run in London with a semi-final win over Samoa. Like the quarterfinal, they were impressive in the first stanza. Afrika showed off his pace as he capitalised on a loose ball and had a 50m run in at the corner.
Samoa took the the lead moments later with a converted try but with structured play, the Blitzboks outdid the South Pacific Islanders in three phases for Benjamin to secure a 12-7 half-time lead.
Chris Dry extended the South Africans’ lead to 12 points with a soft try after the restart. However, Samoa proved why they are on top of the World Series log as they got back into the game with a five-pointer of their own.
Samoa had several chances to regain the lead, but poor handling and lack of composure saw them fail to get back into the game. Juries sealed South Africa’s place in the final as his brilliant chip and chase was the final score of the game.
However, South Africa would get their first taste of defeat in London against Australia in the Cup final. It was a disappointing to end to what was their most impressive tournament of the 2010 World Series.
The Aussies outscored the defending champions four tries to three with James Stanard’s and Henry Vanderglas’ second half tries proving the significant scores.
In other results, New Zealand grabbed the consolation Plate title after beating Fiji 26-24.
Springbok Sevens results, Day 2:
Cup quarterfinal: England 12 South Africa 17
Cup semi-final: South Africa 24 Samoa 12
Cup final: South Africa 19 Australia 14
For all fixtures and results click here
25 Comments
23 May 2010, 12:55 pm
The Oke Dragons should beat the St Georges.
23 May 2010, 13:00 pm
@Panzer Chief(cane)-1:
Howzit my brother.
Glad they opened this thread,we are now at the business end of the tournament
23 May 2010, 13:09 pm
Gonna get another epic FAIL Boks? Pull finger this time
23 May 2010, 14:10 pm
Did you guys hear the commentators and the English coach? They cry worse than the Aussies! Struth! My Ouma used to say ” hulle is niks gewoond”. That sure applies to the English crybabies!
23 May 2010, 14:15 pm
SA will play the winner of the NZ/Samoa game.
23 May 2010, 15:36 pm
Ooops………………… looks like you Saffa’s will be playing SAMOA.
These Samoan’s are starting to piss me off….
8)
23 May 2010, 16:25 pm
@ZA1(ZA1)-4: the englsh coach was extremely emotional…he actually used the word!just loved his pain.
23 May 2010, 16:52 pm
Feel bad for the English coach, one can only imagine how he feels.
23 May 2010, 17:52 pm
yes we doing to Samoa what Nz couldn’t 19 – 7 Sa up 2 min out.
23 May 2010, 17:53 pm
19-12
23 May 2010, 18:03 pm
Well done to get into Final! Great display!
23 May 2010, 18:08 pm
well played by the lads
23 May 2010, 18:20 pm
eish well done to kenia for pulling that game out of the fire
23 May 2010, 20:49 pm
Wow, really pitiful display by SA in final. Really lethargic defence, as if standing on the side-lines watching the Aussies run around them – not interested to tackle or stop Aussies, and when making a tackle – half-baked. Then giving away a penalty on their try-line with 1 min to play!
Quite embarrassing really after the previous great performances. Seeing that must have really got Samoan blood boiling.
Well done to Aus – they were focussed and determined, and ran circles around SA, and certainly deserved the win.
Listening to Paul Treu’s half time pep-talk was interesting. Sorry to say but that guy would not inspire my deceased grandmother to bake a cake … and she loved baking cakes! Maybe instead of giving a lame speech about Aussies not belonging there (which they certainly did) … perhaps give some advice on what to improve.
Sad result to great weekend.
23 May 2010, 20:59 pm
@skopskiet(yliad)-10: LUCKY FDP did not play
23 May 2010, 21:35 pm
@TheBoksAreBack(bringbacktheboks)-14: “Sorry to say but that guy would not inspire my deceased grandmother to bake a cake”
True, necromancing Sevens coaches are thin on the ground in SA.
23 May 2010, 23:23 pm
A pity about the final result, but I have to say objectively, we (SA) played well in the final, but the Australian side had been the dominant one the whole weekend and had too much in the end. Anyone who saw them dismantle Scotland and England on Day 1 would know that they were presumptive favourites going into Day 2 and then had a significantly easier route to the final, because you had NZ, Samoa, SA and England on one side, Aus and Fiji on the other (and no disrespect to Wales or Argentina, but you know which side of that you’d rather be!)
So the team talk thing is because you have to understand that you have 2 minutes to get a message across, and the key was to give the players a sense of belief that they had the game in their hand if they could minimize mistakes. Many of those errors stemmed from lack of composure and belief in the plan. So the issue was execution of the game-plan, not the actual “need to do to improve”. We already knew what to do, it was a question of doing it. And while it may sound easy, that is never a question of quickly saying “Do A, B and C”. So the approach in that particular team-talk was to emphasize our senior player-experience and the fact that we could, if we executed properly, have been up at half-time. You say what you believe will work in those 2 minutes, and providing excessive information is unlikely to work.
Just on the Australians, since the beginning of the season, they have been improving game after game, and I can’t stress enough how high a quality they are. Their performances against England and Scotland on Day 1 were among the best I’ve ever seen in Sevens. They are all pedigreed players, hand-picked by Robbie Deans out of the Australian Academy system to play 7s with a view towards integrating them into 15s in two to three years. So more than any other country (NZ never gets 7s players into 15s anymore, SA got Aplon and de Jongh in just this weekend, but this is not by design as much as it is player choice and skill), Australia will soon see a host of these young guys playing Super 15 very soon.
This strategic alignment between 7s and 15s is unique, since no other country has it (we must fight for players in SA, for example, and play a distant second to Union commitments, as do England and NZ), and the Australians will become the most dominant side in rugby unless that changes. Particularly with the Olympic inclusion, 7s in Aus will now also benefit from the integration into the Australian Olympic system, which is really the benchmark for high performance sport around the world (the Chinese and British systems are copies of it), and so all in all, Australian rugby is looming ominously because of its strategic foresight (ironically, influenced heavily by robbie Deans).
Anyway, a disappointing result for us (SA) in that final, because too many errors cost us, but it’s a bit extreme for “The Boks are Back” to call it a “pitiful display” and to say that Aus “ran circles around us”. Look at the match objectively, we had equal possession, equal tackle stats, equal time in 22m, same passes, just more clinical finishing by them, whereas we lacked composure on the final press (as witnessed by 2 kicks with a man over). No one wishes to lose, of course, but the match was very closely contested, but the form team of the weekend won. Just.
Anyway, my two cents’ worth from London.
Ross
24 May 2010, 00:36 am
Fabian Juries is superb..showed why he is rated one of the Top 3-5 best eva 7′s players.(Serevi,Ryder,Lawrence,Rush,Mai,Gollings,Juries,Gomes Cora-take ur pick)
Juries is a freak,dude is in his late 20′s I think but he is still as rapid as ever,his acceleration/feet are only bettered by a fit/insipired Ryder.
Was great to see Faba bk..
24 May 2010, 02:56 am
@Sevens fan(Sevens fan)-17: I am surprised to say that what you have said about the Aussie team looks to be the case.
Deans and Nucifora made no secret that they are using the 7′s team to blood youngsters for the 15 man game.
I assumed it would result in a lot of pain for the 7′s team for the good of the Wallabies, but it looks as if the extra focus on skills and development in the team (even if it is purely for longterm Wallaby development) is already paying dividends.
That said, they still have a long way to go to achieve the consistent performances of say Fiji or NZ, who have permanent specialist 7′s players, or the Blitzboks when they are able to field their top team.
24 May 2010, 05:29 am
17. Sevens fan(Sevens fan) : Spot on
Sevens should be taken seriously as a player development tool.
24 May 2010, 06:13 am
Excellent note Sevens. It’s a good grounding for developing running skills for backs and loosies. But set piece, kicking and tight stuff; not so sure. But SA has so many good players that with the Oz attanetion to detail we’d be world beaters more consistently. With the current admin it ain’t going to happen.
24 May 2010, 08:04 am
@husky(husky)-21: Nucifora was explaining on the Rugby Club a while back that 7s was perfect for developing allround ability in backs and loosies, because with only 7 players there is nowhere to hide any weaknesses.
If you are big and fast but cannot pass, or fast with good playmaker skills but cannot tackle, you will get found out very quickly.
I think his aim is to get all young players involved in Sevens development, so they hit Super Rugby around age 21, with plenty of years left to hone their setpiece skills after having already developed strong fundamentals.
There are already some SA success stories too in Ebersohn, and De Jongh and Aplon too I believe, now just to do the same with some big young loosies. Koster would be a good example.
Plus long term, imagine a bunch of young Schalk types with the ball skills of a George Smith. Scary stuff indeed.
24 May 2010, 09:10 am
Seeing the Blitz-bokke dispose of one of tournament favourites
Samoa,I had high hopes for the final, but alas some selfish
play and woeful tackling cost the the final.
24 May 2010, 09:11 am
@DonutDunning(DonutDunning)-22:
You can add Ryan Kankowski’s name to that list.
24 May 2010, 10:49 am
I agree on the development side. As someone who is involved in the game, I would like to also see Sevens elevated to where it should be in terms of commercialization and revenue in its own right – it would be substantially bigger as its own entity if the “farts in ties” (to borrow from Will Carling) would allow it – the game has much going for it from a branding and marketing point of view.
But in terms of its role in development, often we hear about this notion of “use the game for development”. The truth in South Africa is that it’s a token quote only, and those players who have come through have been be accident rather than design. They choose to play Sevens (Aplon and Ebersohn), or they are allowed to play a few tournaments because their unions have no need for them for a short time.
What Australia have done is to integrate Sevens into the pathway. This is as much out of necessity as anything else – they don’t have as many opportunities to test and blood young players as others countries do. I suspect that if you analyze the average age of Super 14 teams, you would confirm this. Or at least, they have far more players under 22 playing Super14.
Their Sevens strategy then, is the first in the world that recognizes the potential of the game (commercially and for development) and they’re going to produce some outrageously good players in the next 2 years. Yes, they need a separate strategy for the front row and locks, but they’ll have that too.
It worries me a great deal, as someone involved in SA Sevens, that they, plus the USA, are looking with such focus at Sevens, because I guarantee that in five years time, they will be untouchable, unless we respond. That’s in Sevens.
With regards to 15s, we may produce a lot of players, but that kind of approach is the same “myopic” approach that got the USA steel industry into trouble in the early 20th century. Famous paper called “marketing myopia”. Strategically, if you fail to appreciate that volume of talent is not a sustainable resource, you lose.
And finally, I think the Aussies are not purely doing it for development. They want to win the Olympic Gold medal, and so to them, the status of Sevens is significantly higher than it was a year ago, and it will continue to rise.
I know that many rugby followers don’t have much time for Sevens. They see it as “half-baked” and gimmicky. And yes, I’m biased here, but the reason you may feel that is because the traditional unions have “told” you to feel that through their complete disregard for the game as a valuable commercial entity.
Sevens will become what T20 is to cricket. And you may be surprised to learn that 61% of all rugby-playing nations believe that within 10 years, Sevens will be bigger than 15s. This came out of a survey done by the IRB, and which was presented at a meeting I attended in London this past week. So out of 110 rugby playing nations, about 70 see Sevens. The 40 that don’t, sadly, including the big unions of SA, NZ, Aus, Eng, Scotland, Ireland, Wales. In other words, traditional.
Imagine India sitting stagnant on T20 cricket. If the old “farts in ties” had their way, the IPL would never have happened and we’d all be sipping tea clapping politely as players in white flannels scored 2 runs an over during a day of Test cricket. Sport is entertainment, it must respond or audiences will continue to fall (25% down in Super 14 in New Zealand this year, for example). Sevens holds the key to turning that around.
Ross
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