Blitzbok coach Philip Snyman was not in a good mood at the end of the opening day of the Olympic sevens after watching his charges go down to both Ireland New Zealand.
While a medal is not a completely lost cause, the back-to-back losses have certainly made things tough for the men in green and gold who can now only advance as one of the two best third place sides.
To finish third the Blitzbokke will need to beat Japan in their final pool game at 4pm on Wednesday afternoon. Like South Africa the Japanese lost both of their opening games on Wednesday – and form wise, they conceded more than Snyman’s team did.
But the South African’s, whose form the entire season has been patchy and a long way off the highs they produced in 2023, will still have to do it the hard way if they scrape through in third as they will be required to face the top teams as they head in the knockouts.
Speaking to the media at the end of the opening day’s action Snyman said: “I think the first game against Ireland, we only had 15% ball possession and you can’t play the game like that and to only lose 10-5, I think the guys defended well…
“We only kept the ball once for more than three phases and we scored.
“The second game against New Zealand, the guys defended well at stages and once we got the ball we couldn’t put up phases, we made schoolboy errors. We looked like we didn’t want to have the ball, it looked like we didn’t want to attack,” said Snyman, a former player who won bronze at Rio 2016.
“We need to dig deep and we need to look hard at ourselves and get ourselves in a good mental space for tomorrow and make sure we rock up.
“We can still make it to the quarterfinals, but it’s all up to us. We need to come out with the right mentality and play together as a collective and show what this team can do.”
Snyman said they would have a deeper assessment overnight. “We need to get back onto the horse, get back to zero as quickly as possible after a good win or a bad loss.
“We will have a good review tonight and then again some words and then after that we need to put it behind us and then only one game in front of us and only focus on the next job …
“If we play the way that we can this team can be a good team. There’s a good bunch of players there, we just need to fire as a collective,” he said.
Going into the second day the Blitzbokke are in third place on the Group A table with the best points difference of all the teams, across all three pools who are outside the top two positions. But the USA’s draw with France in their opening fixture gives them an advantage and if they beat Uruguay (which looks likely), they will be the best third place side, leaving only one spot available for South Africa.
Text: SA Rugby
