Samoa too strong for injury-hit Blitzbokke
Samoa delivered a powerful performance to beat South Africa 47-0 at the Glasgow Sevens on Sunday, and in doing so eliminated the Blitzbokke from the penultimate HSBC Sevens World Series tournament of the season.
More bad news for injury-hit South Africa is that Kyle Brown, the inspirational Springbok Sevens captain, look set to miss the final tournament of the season next week in London after he sustained an ankle injury on Saturday.
Four tries put Samoa in control and 28-0 ahead at half time in the first Plate semi-final, after both teams had lost their Cup quarter-final matches – South Africa against England and Samoa against Fiji. South Africa simply have no answer to Samoa, the islanders scoring seven tries with Tom Iosefo scoring a first half hat-trick.
Earlier in the day the Blitzbokke nearly snatched a victory over England before losing 19-14. South Africa, already missing the services of Cecil Africa, Mark Richards, Paul Delport and Boom Prinsloo through injury, also lost their skipper who did not play on Sunday.
SA-born Matt Turner scored twice and the speedy Dan Norton added a third for England, who led 12-0 at the break. Cornal Hendricks and Branco du Preez scored for South Africa, while Steven Hunt was pulled down just before the try line for what would have been the match-winning score.
Paul Treu’s team must now regroup for the final World Series tournament next weekend in England.
“I’m hugely disappointed because, apart from the second half against England, we seldom got going today. We missed a lot of players through injury and that had a major effect on us, plus we gave debuts to Ryan Nell, Jamba Ulengo and Clayton Blommetjies,” said Treu.
Stephan Dippenaar also received a knock on his ankle while Okkie Kruger (hamstring) failed his fitness test.
“With Kyle and Dippies both injured we are currently without a hooker. We might have to call on Neil Powell to help us out in that department, but will confirm that in a day or so,” said Treu.
The Springbok Sevens coach added: “We now have to go back to the drawing board and it will be my job to lift them and get them in the right frame of mind for next week. We learned some hard lessons in Glasgow but I am confident we will bounce back with a much better performance at Twickenham.”
Before the weekend the Blitzbokke occupied third place on the log, but they will unfortunately slip down the table because England (through to the Cup final) and Samoa (Plate Final) managed to progress further than them.
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