The eight teams contesting the HSBC SVNS series are at it again in Perth on Saturday and Sunday and for the Springbok Sevens team, the weekend can not arrive any sooner.
According to Siviwe Soyizwapi, who leads the Blitzboks into battle at HBF Park in the fourth tournament of the 2026 series, they are eager to redeem themselves after some uncharacteristic errors tripped them up last weekend in Singapore.
That was quite a let-down for the team who conquered all in Cape Town in December and they had to take a hard inward look at themselves, the captain admitted before posing with his opposing counterparts at the traditional captains photo, this time at the scenic Scarborough beach in Perth.
“It was a tough weekend in Singapore, so coming here and out to the local beach for the captains’ photo does perk you up, especially on a beautiful day such as today,” Soyizwapi said before turning his attention to the weekend’s action again.
“We know how much potential we have as a group, so making silly errors is frustrating. We don’t mind the odd bad call that comes our way, that will happen but dropping a ball or making a bad pass or missing a tackle, those things are on us and no one else can be blamed for that.”
What will make the weekend’s action more compelling to watch for the pundits will be the change in tactics from the various teams as many faced off last weekend as well.
The Blitzboks will again face Spain and Fiji, with Argentina their only “new” opponent in Pool A. Where they outplayed the Spanish for a 21-14 win, they lost to Fiji in extra time after scores were even (19-19) at the end of normal time and for Soyizwapi, it will be a matter of expecting the expected, but to execute better.
“The teams know each other by now and tactically each one will be well aware of what the others bring to the game,” he said. “We still have some things up our sleeve, but so will the other teams, so we need to be strategic and better in our execution in order to be successful.”
Some good attention to detail went into their training session and Soyizwapi is confident that they will come out on top.
They will have time to clear the heads on Thursday, when the players have the day to themselves: “We will have a day off tomorrow and that down time will come in handy as we could go sightseeing a bit, but the mindset is pretty much on fixing what went wrong last time around. We messed up, so we need to fix that ourselves.”
Soyizwapi will play in his 62nd world series tournament and will equal the tally of Blitzbok head coach, Philip Snyman. Branco du Preez remains the most experienced Springbok Sevens player ever, with 85 tournament appearances.
Selected Blitzboks stats:
Most tournament caps:
- 85 Branco du Preez
- 74 Chris Dry
- 69 Kyle Brown
- 68 Frankie Horne
- 66 Cecil Afrika
Most appearances in Australia:
- 10 Chris Dry
- 8 Cecil Afrika
- 8 Kyle Brown
- 8 Frankie Horne
- 7 Branco du Preez
Rdtn
The Rugby World Cup is held every four years and is the premier international rugby union competition. The inaugural tournament took place in 1987, co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand. Since then, the competition has grown significantly in size and popularity.
Trick Baron
Sport Trivia: Who won the WBA junior lightweight title in 1986 and sucessfully defended it 12 times? Answer: Brian Mitchell. He started his boxing career in 1981, and the majority of his fights were abroad due to the political status in South Africa. He finished his career with 46 wins, one loss and two draws. His 12 successful defences of the junior-lightweight title are a record for that boxing division.