Johannesburg - Springbok Sevens captain Kyle Brown believes that experimentation has become the order of the day in the HSBC World Sevens Series as the various nations build up towards the code’s return to the Olympic Games in Rio in 2016.
The Boks dominated last week’s tournament in Dubai, running up an impressive 101 points to just seven on the deciding day, but they were disappointing at the Gold Coast tournament before that, and generally teams are struggling for consistency this season.
Brown, who will lead the Blitzbokke as they go out to defend their title at the Nelson Mandela Bay Sevens this weekend, feels it is going to take a while for trends to start emerging and that it is too soon now to speculate on how the teams are placed for 2016.
“It feels like an experimental stage at the moment, with everyone trying a few things out before the start of the Olympic cycle,” said Brown on the eve of the third leg of the current World Sevens Series.
That said, the Sevens Boks look well placed, with Brown’s team picking up an impressive head of steam to comprehensively wrap up the Dubai tournament.
“It does feel that for us things have come together very well over the last few months,” said the skipper.
“We must try things, and try new players, but we must slowly blood new players in rather than rushing it and making wholesale changes. Then build from there. Most of the teams are up and down at the moment, but we are not going to focus on that. We just want to be consistent and keep the processes together.”
As the Western Province speedster Seabelo Senatla put it, being consistent means achieving a baseline target in every tournament.
“What we need to do is make sure we make the semi-final every time. If we can do that, we will be ticking off the consistency block and putting ourselves in with a good chance of winning every competition we play in,” said Senatla.
The Welkom born and bred flyer is an example of the ever increasing intensity of the focus on rugby’s return to the Olympics.
And, as winners of last year’s Commonwealth Games gold, the Blitzbokke are sure to arrive in Rio among the red hot favourites.
Certainly, they were on a different planet to the rest of the teams last week in Dubai.
However, according to Brown and Senatla, some introspection between the first and second days inspired a mental switch that transformed the Boks.
“The biggest obstacle to us doing well in this tournament (PE) is ourselves,” said Brown. “We saw last week what we could do. It has been mentioned that there was a big change evident from day one to day two of the tournament in Dubai, and that perception is correct. But it wasn’t as if we went out on the second day and just decided that because we were playing Argentina in the quarter-finals it was time to fire.
“We made the change from within, by having a good hard look at ourselves, assessing where we were going wrong, and putting it right. We lifted ourselves on day two, we had hunger in our eyes, and a clear vision of what we had to do. We need to maintain that focus at the weekend.”
The key to the Boks’ success is the blend in their game. In the knockout phases last week they appeared to stun their opponents with their physicality. The Blitzbokke fed off subsequent mistakes, but there was also some intelligent kicking from Cecil Afrika and Branco du Preez.
Afrika’s kick-offs, so important in the Sevens format, have also been spot on, while the pace provided out wide by not just Senatla but also the likes of his WP teammate Cheslin Kolbe is a huge asset for the team.
Saturday Star