Philip Snyman: 'It was certainly not our best performance in a while'

Philip Snyman was under no illusion that his Blitzboks team were below par at their HSBC SVNS Series stop in Singapore.

Over two days South Africa were frustrated at the National Stadium and finished fourth overall after they lost to France and New Zealand on Day 2.

“It was certainly not our best performance in a while,” Snyman said. “There was no lack of effort out there, but our execution and decision making were not up to standard, and we paid the price for that”

Now the side sit third in the overall standings, level on points with Singapore’s runners-up, France. For this weekend’s tournament in Perth, South Africa have been named in Pool A with Fiji, Spain and Argentina.

In Western Australia ahead of the weekend’s competition at HBF Park  the Boks have plenty to be working on. One major work on will be their discipline after they coughed up two yellow cards against Fiji in the pool stages. A kiss of death for any side.

In the wake of disappointment Snyman was keen to express that his team’s misfortune did not come as a result of inexperience. Luan Giliomee made his Blitzboks debut at the tournament, while Nabo Sokoyi appeared at just his second HSBC SVNS event.

“There was a risk in bringing a couple of players with very little if any tournament experiences under the belt, but we are working towards squad depth as well,” he said.

“I was happy with the efforts of Luan Giliomee and Nabo Sakoyi. We anticipated that it could affect us a little, but overall, we were just not good enough.

“The plus points are that those younger players now experienced yet another tournament and Luan, playing in his first tournament, experienced what it is to play against Fiji, France and New Zealand for example.

“We are now heading to Perth where we will work on those deficiencies in our execution. We have an internal scorecard on our team standards, and we will revisit that to remind ourselves what we stand for and what our standards are as the Springbok Sevens team.”