Springbok Sevens coach Philip Snyman was beaming with pride after the Blitzboks won the HSBC SVNS Cape Town for the first time since 2015 on Sunday evening.
The Blitzboks beat France by 26-14 in the final of the tournament, which played out with more than 75,000 people in attendance over the two days.
It was a special evening for Snyman, who was part of the Blitzbok squad that won the inaugural Cape Town tournament in 2015, but he gave all the plaudits to the players, who delivered four great performances over the weekend.
“It’s really great to see the players enjoy this win,” said Snyman.
“They are the real heroes of this weekend and they played for every member of our squad who could not be on the field tonight.
“We are very happy with the win, especially since everyone in the squad worked extremely hard, and I’m very proud of how they played.”
Snyman said the Blitzboks identified two areas in their play they had to improve on since last weekend’s tournament in Dubai.
“We wanted to apply more pressure on defence and then play from turnover ball, and make sure we get the ball to our playmakers on the outside as soon as possible,” he said.
“We were very clinical and only conceded two tries on the first day and we clicked into a higher gear on day two. Slow starts in the semi-final and the final made things a bit difficult, but the guys showed a lot of character to come back and win those games.
“The players executed our plans to perfection this weekend and in doing so, they showed what we are capable of. They really played very well.”
The Blitzbok head coach said the entire squad worked very hard in the last few months and the victory in Cape Town was just reward for the hours and hours spent on the training pitch.
“This goes to every South African who kept on supporting us – we have the best supporters in the world and hopefully this will be the start of big things for the Blitzboks,” he added.
Blitzbok co-captain Zain Davids said: “I think you can see the guys are [already] celebrating. We really wanted this. The guys showed a lot of heart out there – we played for each other.”
Impi Visser, the team’s other co-captain, added: “It’s just incredible. It’s been nine years since we last won it so it’s great to break the curse and give the people of Cape Town something to really celebrate.
“We knew that we have a special group of players, but we came up a bit short last week in Dubai. Some new guys came in and really stepped up this week. We’re building something really special and once we have that self-belief we can really go to that number one spot.”
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