Sixth place offers valuable lessons for Springbok Women's Sevens

Springbok Women’s Sevens head coach Cecil Afrika described his team’s sixth-place finish at the Rugby Africa Women’s Sevens as a ‘mixed bag’.

Afrika led an ‘A’ team to Nairobi as he aimed to broaden the base of players available to him in the coming months.

Last season, the Springbok Women’s Sevens went from HSBC SVNS 3 all the way to the HSBC SVNS World Championship. They have already qualified for HSBC SVNS 2 in the upcoming season.

Only four players selected for the trip to Kenya had previous HSBC SVNS experience. This included the team’s captain, Vianca Boer, along with Jané Mulder, Shanidiné Bezuidenhout and Owami Mohuli.

“It was definitely a mixed bag of results,” Afrika said. “The team performed within the range of anticipated outcomes if you consider that this was their first experience at such a level.

“The ladies gained real-time experience in the tournament, which allowed them to better understand demands of the game which is different to training where you can run it back if errors are made.”

This younger crop of player certainly had talent among its ranks. Haylee Hardneck, Siphumelele Mdlalose and Tereské Kabuika-Ilunga all played against an USA Under-20 side earlier in the year, while Isabella Nel and Kiera Bowker have only recently traded other sports for rugby.

It was a single loss to Zambia on the first day of competition that derailed the Springbok Women’s title ambitions, having won comfortably against Rwanda and Zimbabwe earlier in the day.

On day two the side lost 24-17 against Uganda in the quarter-finals, beat Mauritius 48-0 and were then defeated 17-12 by Zambia in the fifth-place final. Uganda ultimately claimed HSBC SVNS 3 qualification with a 33-0 win over Tunisia in the first-place final.

“There was massive growth even though it’s not necessarily on the scoreboard,” Afrika said.

“Some of the players really put up their hands for the wider training squad in the future and this was a perfect opportunity to recognise those players as we don’t get a lot of game time.

“The matches we lost were quite close and the games we won were quite comfortable. Overall, it was a positive weekend for us.”