Blitzboks top pool but Samoa wait in quarters

The Springbok Sevens team will face Samoa in their Vancouver Sevens quarterfinal after pipping a tough Australian team 22-19 in their final Pool C game in the early hours of Sunday morning.

While Fiji and New Zealand continued to impress since returning to the Sevens fold last weekend in Singapore, the Blitzboks had a far tougher pool and a lot closer games as they first had to deal with a tough Canada team before beating the Australians by a whisper.

If they get past Samoa, who are bound to be physical, the Blitzboks face the winner of Fiji and France in the semifinals.

But after losing three games in a row and ending a 36 match winning streak in Singapore, the focus has been on getting the standards back up to where the Blitzboks need them to be.

There is a sense that the competition has become a lot tougher, and teams know each other a lot better by this stage of the World Series, and compounded with injuries, this has made it tougher for the South Africans.

Unfortunately the challenge remains the same and the Blitzboks did well to win despite the tough opposition they had on day one of the tournament. They will, however, need to up their game in the knockout rounds if they are to try and win the Vancouver Sevens.

Against Australia it was an early brace from Ronald Brown in the first and fourth minutes that put them ahead, with Ben Marr and Matthew Gonzalez scoring for Australia in the first half to even things up.

But when Nic Malouf scored early in the second half, the Blitzboks knew they would have a game on their hands and a power try by Zain Davids and then some more incredible work by JC Pretorius saw them home by a whisker in the end.

Earlier Canada’s spirited second half performance gave the Blitzboks a massive scare in their second Pool C game on Saturday night, but a late try by Selvyn Davids saw the Blitzboks sneak home 19-14 and stay unbeaten.

After going 12-0 up by halftime, the second half belonged to the host side, as they found holes in the Blitzbok defence and had a fortunate bounce to score two converted tries and put the series leaders under a lot of pressure as the minutes counted down.

Davids eventually found the hole, as he so often does, in the defence to break local hearts and send the Blitzboks into a showdown with Australia for pool honours.

The Blitzboks had opened their campaign by beating Spain 31-12.

Kenya caused a major upset by taking some revenge on the USA from last week’s loss in Singapore, pipping the Americans 19-17 in a closely fought game.

Last weekend a poor conversion cost the Kenyans as they lost the same fixture 12-10 when they should at least have drawn. Kenya are in the same pool as Fiji and England with the Fijians beating the English side 27-12 in their opening pool game.

But in their next game against Fiji, they hit a wall, with the Fijians running out easy 38-7 winners. Kenya’s day ended in disappointment as they went down 19-12 to England in their final game.

Kenya will now face Ireland at 18.44 (CAT, GMT+2) in the 9th place quarterfinal.

The Cup Quarterfinals (all times CAT, GMT+2 and live on SuperSport) are as follows:

7:40pm Fiji v France
8:02pm South Africa v Samoa
8:24pm Argentina v England
8:46pm New Zealand v Australia.

Cup semifinals scheduled from 11:44pm. The Cup final is scheduled for Monday morning SA time at 2:58am.