The South African Sevens Rugby team will get a chance to redeem themselves this coming weekend when they take to the field at the penultimate tournament of the 2024/25 SVNS Series in Singapore.
After a disappointing outing in Hong Kong last week, the South Africans find themselves in fourth place on the log with 66 points, but a win in Singapore will see them end the league phase in the top four, ahead of the Grand Finale tournament in Los Angeles (US) from 3 to 4 May.
Dropped points
But while the season winner will be determined by who wins in LA in May, bagging 20 points by winning in Singapore will not be enough for coach Philip Snyman’s Blitzboks to win the SVNS Series Table-toppers title, which is determined by who finishes first on the points table after six tournaments.
Log-leaders Argentina (88 points), Fiji (76) and Spain (74) find themselves in a three-horse race for the Table-toppers crown.
Eye On The BIG Prize
And with the big SVNS Series prize up for grabs in LA, Blitzbok power forward Impi Visser reckons winning in Singapore will be a welcome boost ahead of next month’s Grand Finale as he and his mates are itching to right the wrongs of only managing a ninth-place finish in Hong Kong. Their worst performance of the season.
Visser says:
We are here [in Singapore], and we mean business. Especially after a disappointing weekend in Hong Kong. We fired hot and then very cold, and it leaves us with a lot of work to do this weekend, and we need to get stuck in.
As one of the leaders of the team, you always wonder where we can get better, what went wrong, you know. What do we need to work on and fix, and do we need to change anything? You always have these thoughts.
But once you get a chance to sit down and analyse the footage, you realise it was small mistakes that put us in those positions. We did not play towards our strengths, and that’s the one big team that summed up our weekend in Hong Kong.
Happy Hunting Ground
After another Hong Kong failure, the Blitzboks will also feel much better about their chances of success in Singapore. Having one two titles (2004 and 2019) and reaching the Cup semi-finals on four previous occasions.
And Visser says there is no reason why he and his mates can’t go fishing for a third title.
It is a bitter pill to swallow not being able to still get the number one spot on the log after our poor performance [in Hong Kong]. That is something that definitely hurt a little bit more than I expeted but now we have an opportunity to go and grab some extra points this weekend and maybe gun for that third place.
It is going to be a battle out but we definitely have this tournament as a nice building block towards LA where we want to go and win the championship.
Super Singapore Showdown
South Africa has been drawn in Pool A of the Singapore SVNS alongside winners in Hong Kong, Argentina, and Great Britain.
The Singapore event follows the same competition rules as the Cape Town SVNS in December, with no Cup quarter finals round as the winners of the three-team groups qualify for the Cup semi-finals, while the teams placing second and third in their respective groups face off in playoffs for positions 5th to 10th.
And this format might just suit the Blitzboks who won in Cape Town where it was first trailed this season.
Changes to Blitzboks team
Meanwhile, David Brits and Sebastiaan Job have joined up with the Springbok Sevens team as injury replacements for Gino Cupido and Quewin Nortje.
The team is:
- Ryan Oosthuizen
- Impi Visser
- Zain Davids
- Ricardo Duarttee
- Selvyn Davids
- Dewald Human
- Siviwe Soyizwapi
- Shilton van Wyk
- Donavan Don
- Sebastiaan Job
- David Brits
- Zander Reynders
- Tristan Leyds
