After a narrowly successful opening game win against Canada in wet and slippery conditions, the Blitzboks lost to both Uruguay and Ireland in the rest of their pool stage games. Having won only one of their three pool games, the Springbok Sevens team relied on points difference to qualify for the tournament's quarter-final stages. 

Although the team managed to push through the weather conditions against Canada, that was not the case for their 10-5 loss to Uruguay and 14-5 loss to Ireland. The weather called for many game postponements and the Blitzboks were directly affected seeing that their match against Uruguay was moved twice due to lightning in the area preventing play.

Despite difficult weather conditions and disappointing game outcomes, the South Africans managed to scrape through to the knock-out stages seeing they had a 16-point advantage to play with. 

Commenting on the games the team respectively lost, assistant coach, Philip Snyman, said: “The conditions apart, we did not play well. We did fairly well in our game against Canada, but against Uruguay we were really poor at the breakdown and protecting our ball, we were too slow to the breakdown and gave possession away unnecessarily.”

He added: “Against Ireland, we had numerous opportunities to put them under pressure and get points, but we did not use them. We kicked possession away with players in good positions and at other times just needed to play the overlap, but did not do so.”

Possession seemed to largely be the thorn in their side and will have to be worked on if they plan on coming back stronger in their quarter-final clash. 

Fiji advanced to the top 8 unbeaten in their pool and will prove to be tough competition for South Africa. 

This game will be the second quarter-final and is scheduled to kick off at 20:45 on Sunday evening. 

Kayla Barker/OFM Sport