The Blitzboks' ninth-place finish at the Singapore leg of the World Sevens Series highlighted two things - the tricky nature of the format and their inconsistency.
The last time the Blitzboks tasted tournament success was in Cape Town back in December 2024, and the fact that their home leg of the Series featured the same format as the Singapore leg could surely have been regarded as a positive and something to count in their favour. However, it was anything but.
At the 2024 Cape Town SVNS, teams only played two pool matches, with the four teams that finished top of their pools progressing straight to the semi-finals.
This format requires teams to be switched on right from the start. With the regular format (where teams play three pool games leading up to the knock-outs), teams can drop a game and still progress to the play-offs. They can even lose two of the three fixtures and still make it through if they end up being the lucky losers with other results going their way.
For the Blitzboks, the reverse happened.
South Africa experience format fury
Argentina won the league despite defeat against the Blitzboks in their pool match on Saturday. South Africa, on the other hand, won three of their four matches at the National Stadium, but their 38-10 opening defeat to Great Britain knocked them into the minor placings.
On Sunday, the Springbok Sevens team beat the USA 14-12 and went on to topple Australia 26-7, but the damage had been done by that big loss in their pool-opener.
The defeat saw the Blitzboks occupy third spot in their pool, although all three sides in their pool recorded one win and one loss. An extra bonus point for Argentina and Great Britain saw them finish ahead of the Blitzboks.
Fiji won the men's title with a 21-12 victory over surprise finalists Kenya on Sunday, while New Zealand lifted the women's trophy after defeating Australia.
Snyman rues up-and-down Blitzboks
Following the penultimate tournament, Blitzboks chief Philip Snyman described the weekend as “bittersweet”, and rightfully so.
A red card in their first game and a subsequent yellow saw the Blitzboks reduced to five players later in the game.
But the Blitzboks only have themselves to blame for how things went against Great Britain. Their discipline was off, and they simply conceded too many penalties.
While their inconsistency was highlighted in Singapore, there were also a few positives.
The Blitzboks ended Argentina's 15-match winning streak on Day One and produced a top performance against Australia. It was a clinical display filtered of all the errors the team were guilty of in other outings.
As was to be expected, Snyman lamented the lack of consistency:
I believe in this squad and the programme, but we need to be more consistent, which is why we’re not amongst the top three. We still made a massive step up from last season though.
Asia results deal highlight work-ons
Their 2024/25 tournament finishes underline the Blitzboks' inconsistency.
In Dubai, they finished sixth after winning the tournament five years in a row. They followed that up with a historic win in Cape Town. In Perth and Vancouver they placed fourth and second, respectively. Hong Kong and Singapore marked their worst placings of the 2024/25 season.
We have beaten Argentina twice and we played in two finals, but on the Asian leg in the last two weeks we came up short, which we need to address.
We are going to continue to work very hard and make a mental shift to see how we can be more clinical and consistent, because this team have shown they can beat any other team.
Coming into this tournament, we wanted to play according to our standards, and we did that in the last couple of games, so we’re happy with that, but we’re still too inconsistent to be regarded as one of the good teams.
If we can’t get that right, we’ll struggle to be amongst the best, and that is one of our goals. At the start of the season, we said we wanted to be amongst the top teams while also blooding new players with the 2028 Olympic Games in mind.
I think we did that, with someone like Zander Reynders making his debut and making massive steps up every tournament, growing as a player and a leader, while Gino Cupido came through too. We are heading in the right direction, but we need to be more consistent.
How things stand
The Pumas topped the men's regular season standings on the back of three tournament wins this season in Perth, Vancouver, and Hong Kong.
They will be joined in the Sevens World Championship in Los Angeles on 3-4 May by Fiji, Spain, South Africa, France, Australia, New Zealand, and Great Britain, who completed the top eight in the season standings.
The SVNS season will culminate in the World Championship, where the top eight men’s and women’s teams will head to Dignity Health Sports Park, the LA 2028 Olympics venue, for a winner-takes-all battle.
