After their high of causing a major upset in their opening game against a Women’s Rugby powerhouse, the Springbok Sevens women were brought back to earth with a thump on Friday, losing their second pool game to France 49-0.
It was only marginally better than the 53-0 loss to the same opposition in Los Angeles a few months back, but it underlined that while one-off results are worth celebrating, there still is a lot of work to be done when it comes to consistency for Renfred Dazel’s side.
In the match they were nowhere near the level they needed to be, with mistakes aplenty, handling errors and a failure to make their first time tackles left a gulf between the two sides.
The steep loss came after they scored one of their biggest upsets in their short history on the HSBC World Sevens Series circuit beating powerhouse USA 14-12 with the last play of the game.
The USA, who narrowly lost in the final of the Hong Kong Sevens last month to champions New Zealand, are considered one of the top four sides on the circuit and the Blitzboks Womens’ team’s victory was nothing short of groundbreaking.
The victory was engineered by the last play of the game, with the Blitzboks five points behind, but a powerful scrum and an exceptional handoff by Simamkele Namba, with her standout scrumcap, brought matters level.
It was left to Nadine Roos, who scored the opening try for the team, to slot a simple conversion to take the victory.
France are third on the World Series Rankings while the USA are fourth. The Blitzboks Womens’ team are 11th on the standings but can look to improve on their best performance of the season in Los Angeles earlier this year, where they finished sixth.
They now face Japan in their final pool game of the Sevens on Saturday at 5am, which they must win if they are to have a hope of making the quarterfinals and matching their performance in Los Angeles, where they ironically lost to USA 24-7.
Japan also caused an upset by beating USA 22-0 and will be tough opposition for the South Africans.