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All Blacks Sevens ‘finish on a high’ with big win over Blitzboks in Cape Town
With the All Blacks Sevens’ quest for Cape Town SVNS glory already over, the New Zealanders embraced an opportunity to silence the home crowd in their final match of the weekend.
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Playing against hometown favourites South Africa, the All Blacks Sevens saved their best performance of the weekend for last – but it came in the fifth-placed playoff.
New Zealand started their campaign with a disastrous defeat to last weekend’s Dubai SVNS wooden spooners, and they were beaten somewhat convincingly by Samoa later that day.
After sneaking into the quarter-finals as one of the best third-placed sides in pool play, the Kiwis were caught on the wrong side of history under the sweltering morning sun in the Western Cape.
Ireland beat their rugby rivals for the first time on the SVNS Series. They were leading by a relentlessly dominant margin, but three quick tries saw the Kiwis make the score a bit more respectable.
But with all that in the past, the All Blacks Sevens took their learnings and turned into something positive as they handed the Blitzboks an emphatic 31-7 defeat.
“Obviously disappointed with the overall of how the tournament has gone for us,” captain Sione Molia told RugbyPass.
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“We talked about winning the start well and we obviously hadn’t done that so it was good to play South Africa in that last game and get one over them, especially here in Cape Town.
“We know it’s a real tough battle against South Africa here at home and it’s just good to finish on a high and reflect on what we could do better heading into the New Year.”
Playmaker Ngarohi McGarvey-Black opened the scoring in the second minute, and it was all New Zealand from there as they ran in five tries to South Africa’s one.
Cody Vai was the pick of the try-scorers for the New Zealanders with the rising star crossing for a brace – adding five points to the score early in each half.
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The typically vibrant Cape Town crowd was kept unusually quiet during that 14-minute blitz of the Boks.
“The two countries have got a lot of rugby history as well,” Molia added.
“To play them here at home, yes it’s definitely good to get one over them. They obviously got one over us in Dubai. To beat them here in Cape Town, we will definitely take that one.”
Btw they should delete the scrum in sevens and just tap and go like fast Moving League.
It was great to blitz the Boks and shut up the bias gloating crowd in their home town… extremely satisfying… where does the name blitzboks come from anyway… no other team names themselves like this… they are so desperately insecure and fragile they feel the need to do this…well it didn’t work in CT they were blitzed 29-0 by Australia then 31-7 by NZ… what a joke…. They should just settle for what they are… the Springboks and stop pretending they’re the best in the world…LOL
WORLD RUGBIES 7s CURCUIT;
Hopefully the World Rugby 7s rugby circuit RE imagine their format even more and change the way they format their games very soon, so all the top teams play each other often. Otherwise why watch the 7s IRB rugby circuit when it’s not a real competition.
This new IRB format is a nonsense format and is much worse than the old IRBs formatted circuit, because no teams form or consistency counts until the last round. Like having 30 odd practice games. As none of the first six tournaments within ranks really count for anything, as the top eight teams make the final anyway. Which means the top four teams from the first six rounds of the 7s rugby IRB circuit are meaningless. As those teams could come 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th in the IRBs 7s circuits FINAL round.
The old IRB ladder system was much better ranking system that at-least found the most consistent team as the IRB’s FINALIST!
Especially when the past IRBS 7s format usually meant that only the top teams could win this bias tournament, which makes the Worlds rugby 7s circuit very boring!
Presently the IRB champions aren’t the real champions as a team of champions beats a big pool of evenly ranked teams at every IRB circuit, that aren't necessarily the teams that make final. Making the comp worth watching because presently winning on the World Rugbies 7s circuit depends on who you play, and even those games are all meaningless until the last round. Making the game a shame not a game!
By having all of their IRB 7s series top 12 teams put in TWO pools of six teams, ranked in each pool from the previous IRB sevens ladder standings. POOL ONE 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11: POOL TWO 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12:
Would create a real competition as then all the IRB circuit teams would regularly play each other. Then have all the teams by rank from each pool play the other pools teams by rank. Meaning Pool A’s ranked teams would play Pool B’s teams by rank, all the way down to the 6th ranked team in both Pools.
Ie Pool A 1st versus Pool B 1st, Pool A 2nd versus Pool B 2nd, 3rd versus 3rd – 4th versus 4th -5th versus 5th – 6th versus 6th. Which means each team would play six games each to get ranked correctly. Which would be great spectator wise. Which is 66 odd competitive games spread over two/three days.
Or 132 games in the men’s and women’s divisions held over 2/3/4 days, should be accomplishable. With 14 manned squads for nutrition and two or three rugby fields at each location?
And by having the bottom four teams after the IRB circuit having to challenge the top two teams from the challenging series. Would create a pool of 6 teams playing in a round robin or three to make the top four as core teams. To RE merge with the IRBs top 8 IRB teams for the next years IRB circuit. Giving the new challenging teams ‘time’ to develop their game!
They also need to evolve the rules of the game to speed the game up a heap to save time to score more tries, the games have become predictable and boring!
Making the 7s IRB circuit very good to watch that would eventually pay for itself, ‘you’d think!
MENS POOLS:
POOL ONE;-----------------POOL TWO;
1st NEW ZEALAND------------------2nd ARGENTINA
3rd FRANCE---------------------------4th FIJI 5th AUSTRALIA-----------------------6th SAMOA
7th SOUTH AFRICA------------------8th IRELAND 9th USA---------------------------------10th GREAT BRITIAN
11th SPAIN----------------------------12th CANADA
WOMEN’S POOLS
POOL ONE;-----------------POOL TWO;
1st NEW ZEALAND------------------2nd AUSTRALIA 3rd USA--------------------------------4th FRANCE
5th IRELAND-------------------------6th FIJI
7th GREAT BRTIAN-----------------8th JAPAN
9th CANADA-------------------------10th SPAIN 11th BRAZIL-------------------------12TH CHINA
By Adopting these six 7s rugby ELVS would mean all the squads on the World rugbies 7s rugby circuit could win a tournament or two. And would stop the IRB circuit’s predictable boring outcomes?
Who wants to watch a one-sided comp where many squads can’t win it because of its rules? What are ELVs for. These rules would speed the game up and improve its spectacle tenfold. In the order they’re in?
The IRB sevens squads need to have 14 in their squads to have a seven manned bench to help rehydrate the team if these five 7s EVLs were used?
1/ If the TMO was used as a stop clock at the moment a try was scored to when the try scoring team restarts. That would stop probably add two minutes of dead time to most games, and a team could ‘not’ run down the TMO clock while converting a try to win.
2/ Seven points awarded for a try under the posts, would save a lot of time, to get more tries.
3/ All conversions to be taken by the person who scored the try, even if it’s a forward because a scrubbed conversion by a forward would create plenty of time for an extra try or six. Making it far easier to get six quick unconverted tries to win, than to get 4 converted tries to ‘WIN’ a game.
4/ Having one-minute yellow cards for all deliberate knocks-ons and for some cynical game momentum changing fouls, that stops a try from being scored. Would suit any team as having two-minute ‘yellow cards’ is far too long and destroys the games spectacle.
5/ Having two-minute replacement red cards” for dangerous play, and put that player on TMO ‘RE view for a game or for a few game suspensions.
6/ Use the drop goal-line drop-out. Which should already be a law as it’s very hard in sevens rugby to hold a player up over the goal-line, and that type of defence deserves a break. To get to kick the ball away from their goal-line!
Great win, but I thought belting the Aussies 35-5 in pool play was better. A huge surprise. Especially for the Aussie commentator lol. I mean, 35 nil at HT!!! And that was on the back of getting toasted by Canada while the Aussies hammered Samoa.