Durban — The Blitzboks have arrived in Toulouse with a squad boosted by a core of experienced players that have returned for the final two legs of the World Rugby Sevens Series.
The France Sevens is the penultimate tournament of the current World Series and assistant coach Philip Snyman has welcomed back old campaigners in Justin Geduld, Dewald Human, Ronald Brown, Shilton van Wyk and James Murphy.
Snyman, himself a former Blitzboks captain, said they are not expecting miracles from the five, but said they add confidence to a squad that has been rocked by injuries. Half a dozen debutants have been among the 28 players the Blitzboks have been forced to use.
“We have a lot of playmakers back and that changes things. The reality is that they were out of action for a while and in Justin’s case, more than a year, so one must be realistic about their comebacks,” Snyman said. “But they have trained well, and I think we will see a lot of our outside backs in space this weekend. Shilton van Wyk and Mfundo Ndhlovu will enjoy the space for sure.
“The nice feedback from our forwards is that with all the playmakers back, they can now solely focus on their roles of being physical, running hard lines and being effective at the breakdown,” Snyman added.
“We did tweak our defensive approach slightly back in Stellenbosch to curb the strengths of our opponents, but also because we have some new personnel in the squad that add a different dimension.”
Friday’s opponents, France and Fiji, are similar in many ways, Snyman explained.
“France and Fiji play a very unstructured and expansive game with lots of offloads, so you need to force them into some structure to break their stride. If we manage that, we will get positive results.”
The Blitzboks face the USA on Saturday morning in their final pool game.
“The Americans, on the other hand, keep their ball well, so we need to disrupt them at the breakdown by making sure our first arriving player is effective in slowing the ball down or turning it over. We are looking for a positive turnover differential this weekend as that will enable us to counter and get the ball in hand. We know we are very effective with the ball in hand,” Snyman said.
Most of the preparation was done in Stellenbosch, but the two sessions in Toulouse have proved valuable so far, said Snyman.
"We did have a session on Monday in the sunshine and that went really well, then with some rain on Tuesday, which prepared us well for the weekend. The wet weather also made us realise that kicks in behind our opponents might also come into play when we play in rainy conditions on the weekend.”
IOL Sport