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'Disrespectful to our badge': Blitzboks coach tears into team after horror showing in LA
By Kim Ekin
The Blitzboks headed to Los Angeles with hopes of making amends for a disappointing finish in Sydney where they made the final but were soundly beaten 36-0 by New Zealand.
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After claim gold in Dubai late last year the star-studded South Africa 7s side play with expectations of being in the mix for a placing at each event, as they were in Sydney.
No one could have predicted the showing in Los Angeles as the Blitzboks slumped to a 10-5 loss to Uruguay and 14-5 loss to Ireland in the pool play.
A lone victory over Canada by 12-0 was enough to get them through to the quarter-finals but they were thumped by Fiji 28-7.
If that wasn’t disheartening enough, they were beaten 45-5 by Samoa in the fifth place semi-final on the final day of play.
The lacklustre display was blasted by coach Sandile Ngcobo who said his side showed ‘no effort at all’ as they disrespected the Blitzboks reputation.
“It was almost heart-breaking for me to watch from the sidelines as there was no effort at all from the players, and that hurts as the badge that we play for does not deserve that, neither do our supporters or our country,” Ngcobo said.
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“It seemed that complacency crept in and that the guys were just going through the motions expecting things to happen, instead of going there and making it happen.
“A performance like this is disrespectful to our badge and to our country and we will have to have an extremely hard look at ourselves.”
“I will have to ask myself why and how we delivered such a poor performance and how can we fix that.”
“Yes, we did play in the final in the previous tournament in Sydney, but that counted for nothing, we had to start at zero again, but we never did.”
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The All Blacks 7s went on to claim their second consecutive gold placing with a 22-12 win in the final over Argentina, reversing the result from the Hamilton final earlier in January.
Argentina were able to best Fiji by 20-17 in the semi-final while New Zealand comfortably beat Australia 33-17.
New Zealand were able to stretch their lead to 107 points in the 2023 World Sevens Series while Argentina have moved into second in the standings, with 86 points.
South Africa also have 86 points but an inferior points differential places them behind Argentina in third position.
The teams will have to rebound quickly for the Vancouver leg next weekend which will host both the men’s and the women’s circuit.
