Blitzboks desperately need reinforcements ahead of Olympic Games

The Blitzboks are in desperate need of reinforcements as they head into the last three events of the 2023-24 Sevens World Series and then possibly onto the Olympic Games.

It has been a poor and heavily inconsistent past few seasons for the Blitzboks and it sees them in danger of missing out on the Olympics, with them needing to win the Final Olympic Qualification Tournament in June to reach the showpiece event in France.

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The top four teams from last season’s Sevens World Series qualified automatically, which the Blitzboks didn’t manage, followed by them blowing their second shot when they lost the Africa Men’s Sevens final to Kenya, leading to them now being in the last chance saloon.

In this season’s World Sevens Series the Blitzboks have again been notoriously inconsistent, winning the opening tournament in Dubai, before finishing sixth in Cape Town, fifth in Perth, ninth in Vancouver and 11^th in Los Angeles.

This has left them seventh overall on the 12 team log and their disastrous showing in the USA over the past weekend should have set off major alarm bells for SA Rugby.

They only managed two wins, with them edging Spain 22-19 in the pool phase but still finishing bottom of the group, and then beating Canada 28-15 in the last place playoff to just avoid the ignominy of finishing bottom of the tournament.

Squad depth

Blitzboks coach Sandile Ngcobo admitted after the event that one of their biggest challenges was the lack of depth in their squad.

“Having a squad with good depth results in internal competition and guys really fighting hard to get and stay in the team. Our management will have to sit down and see how we can rectify that aspect of our set-up,” said Ngcobo.

Recently there have been reports that SA Rugby is in contact with certain 15s players to try and rope them into the final few events of the Sevens Series and bolster the Blitzboks for the final Olympic qualifier and hopefully a run at the games in Paris.

Werner Kok (Sharks), JC Pretorius (Lions), Angelo Davids (Stormers), Stedman Gans (Bulls) and Sako Makata (Griquas) are former players SA Rugby are reportedly hoping to bring back into the fold.

While they are also reportedly targeting Hacjivah Dayimani (Stormers), Edwill van der Merwe (Lions) and Yaw Penxe (Sharks) who have yet to play SA Sevens.