Blitzboks stunned by Spain in Perth bronze medal match

The ill-disciplined Blitzboks were stunned by Spain 14-7 in the bronze medal match of the Perth Sevens leg, to finish fourth overall in the tournament on Sunday.

After being dumped out at the semifinal stage by hosts Australia the Blitzboks were hoping to finish on a high, but were impressively outplayed by Spain in the end.

Yellow cards to Shilton van Wyk and Ronald Brown proved costly as it allowed Spain to keep hold of the ball and get in a score during the two minutes that they were off.

The match started with both teams trying to gain the upper hand, but making crucial errors that stopped them, that included Juan Ramos almost scoring for Spain after kicking ahead, only for him to knock the ball on while trying to pick up it up with line at his mercy.

However Van Wyk was then sent off for a high tackle, followed almost immediately by an embarrassed looking Brown for petulantly kicking the ball away.

Two man advantage

With a two man advantage it was then just a matter of time for Spain to go over through Eduardo Lopez, under the sticks for the seven pointer to lead at halftime.

Spain should have extended their lead at the start of the second half, but Lopez knocked on with no one in front of him, which allowed the Blitzboks to get back to seven men without further damage.

They then showed how good they can be with ball in hand, as with their first decent spell of possession in the game they moved up the field from their own 22m into Spain’s, where Selvyn Davids danced his way past two defenders to go over under the posts to level the scores.

But that was as good as it got as Spain retook the lead with just over a minute to go as Jaime Manteca superbly picked up an offload to sprint away and score the winning try.

It was an up and down tournament overall for the Blitzboks who started the event with a 24-19 win over USA and 10-7 win over the Aussies to qualify for the quarterfinals with a game to spare.

They went down 19-17 to Argentina in their final pool game to set up a tough quarterfinal against Fiji, but responded with an impressive 19-0 win to make the semifinals, where they were unfortunately edged 17-12 in extra time by the hosts.