The Springbok Women’s Sevens reached their goal of qualifying for the HSBC SVNS World Championship despite finishing third in Montevideo on Sunday, something SA coach Cecil Afrika said they fully deserved following some stellar rugby in the HSBC SVNS 2 tournament at Estadio Charrua on Saturday and Sunday.
The SA side won three of five matches and apart from “14 minutes of poor rugby”, Afrika said they were pleased with all the outcomes of the weekend.
“We had two poor halves basically,” said Afrika.
“We started poorly against Spain in the first match on Saturday and finished poorly against Argentina in the last match on Sunday, but in between we really did well.”
The poor start resulted in the Bok Women going down 15-0 against Spain, eventually losing 15-14. Against Argentina, they conceded three second half tries for a 22-10 defeat.
“Those were bad patches of rugby, but I have to look at the rest of the tournament as well and we really played excellent rugby against China, Brazil and Kenya,” said Afrika.
“Especially our defensive effort was massive and that did put teams under huge pressure. I cannot fault the effort from the ladies, who really gave everything they had.”
The team will travel to the final HSBC SVNS 2 tournament in Sao Paulo this weekend knowing they did enough to qualify for the World Championships, but Afrika said there are still a lot of work to do.
“We need to play matches at this level to get use to the intensity and quality as we are also in the process of building depth in our squad,” he said.
“We gave Shanidinè Bezuidenhout the opportunity to debut in this tournament and she did well, while someone like Lerato Makua, who has not played that many tournaments before, really stood out with her effort.
"She has now matured into a very good international sevens player and that came from being exposed to this level of rugby.”
The team management will have a look at any walking wounded once in Brazil, but Afrika expects a clean bill of health from all his players: “There were no injuries at the end of the tournament, but as it is a back-to-back weekend for everyone, we need to manage that as well.”
Earlier, World Rugby confirmed that Argentina (40 log points) and South Africa (34 log points) are through to the events in Hong Kong (17-19 April), Valladolid (29-31 May) and Bordeaux (5-7 June), with the final HSBC SVNS 2 tournament still to be played.
Spain (34 points) look set to finish third, with China (28 points) and Brazil (22 points) in a race to finish fourth and claim the final qualification berth.