OPINION: SA Rugby, Blitzboks need to fix what has gone wrong

The Blitzboks ended a miserable 2023/24 World Sevens Series in Madrid on Sunday, losing the fifth-place playoff to Ireland. It was the SA Sevens team’s fourth defeat in five matches at the season-ending Madrid Grand Final.

It brought to an end a poor run of results throughout the season, and over this last weekend the Blitzboks lost to Ireland (twice), New Zealand and Fiji and beat Australia. Most were close, tight matches that could have gone either way, but the record books will show the SA Sevens team lost four and won one.

The results will sting the players and coaching team, who went into the tournament on the back of better showings in Singapore and Hong Kong and confident the side had turned the corner.

Olympics

There was also the hope the Blitzboks would do well and build confidence and momentum ahead of probably their biggest tournament this season, the Sevens Olympic repechage tournament in Monaco on June 21-23. That will be the Blitzboks’ final opportunity to win a place at the Paris Olympics later this year.

Twelve men’s and women’s teams will be in action, with only one men’s team and one women’s team advancing to Paris. For the Blitzboks, who have a good record at the Olympics and have in the past been considered one of the best Sevens outfits in the game, it is a must-win.

However, teams such as Great Britain, Canada and Spain will also fancy their chances, especially with the South Africans not playing nearly at the level they once did. Let’s see what they are made of and whether they can lift themselves one more time to make it to the Olympics.

Then Blitzboks coach Philip Snyman and SA Rugby, and possibly some of the senior players, need to sit down and try figure out what went wrong this season and how they will fix it in the 2024/25 campaign.

SA’s Sevens team were the leaders in the game a few years back and with all the talent available in this country they should never be in the position they currently find themselves. The time has now come to have a hard look at Sevens rugby in this country.