BlitzBoks advance to Commonwealth semifinals
COMMONWEALTH GAMES DAY TWO WRAP: The Springbok Sevens were in firm control of their Commonwealth Games quarterfinal on Saturday as they beat Canada by 33-0 to advance into the top four, where they will meet Australia on Sunday at the Coventry Stadium in Birmingham.
They will be without Siviwe Soyizwapi though, as the SA captain’s tournament was cut short after he was injured against Scotland earlier on Saturday – a match the BlitzBoks won by 34-0.
Zain Davids, who took over the captaincy in the quarterfinal from Soyizwapi, said: “We will always be happy with a victory, especially as we stuck to our processes, defended well and we also did our basics well, so I think we can be happy.
“Losing ‘Shakes’ is not great – he is a proper leader who leads from the front and never gives up, the players really look up to him and we realise we have big shoes to fill, but we will try and do that for Siviwe.”
On their semifinal opponent, Australia – who beat Samoa by 7-0 in their quarterfinal – Davids said they will approach it as any other game: “It doesn’t matter who we play, for us it’s ‘game five on day three’ and our focus will be on sticking to our processes and getting our basics right.”
Against Canada on Saturday, three first-half tries – by Ronald Brown, Christie Grobbelaar and Angelo Davids – set up a 21-0 lead at the break, with Angelo Davids’s intercept-try from 80m out – while Brown was in the sin-bin for a high tackle – summing up the SA team’s dominance.
The Canadians tried hard, but defensive pressure from SA saw them make a number of unforced errors, which the BlitzBoks pounced on with gratitude.
Brown got his second try not long after returning to the field shortly after the break, scoring from a Canadian mistake to stretch the lead to 26-0.
Mfundo Ndhlovu, who was declared fit after taking a heavy knock on the first day, also got his name on the score sheet with just over a minute left in the game.
Meanwhile, defending champions New Zealand will take on Fiji in Sunday’s other semifinal.
New Zealand beat Kenya in their quarterfinal, while Fiji were too strong for Scotland.
*All the results and the match schedule for the rest of the weekend can be found here.
Sunday’s Semifinal line-up:
New Zealand v Fiji
Australia v South Africa
Quarterfinal results:
Fiji 34-7 Scotland
South Africa 33-0 Scotland
New Zealand 31-0 Kenya
Australia 7-0 Samoa
Pool Results:
Pool A
New Zealand 63-5 Sri Lanka
England 0-34 Samoa
England 47-19 Sri Lanka
New Zealand 19-17 Samoa
Samoa 44-0 Sri Lanka
New Zealand 20-0 England
Pool B
South Africa 46-0 Malaysia
Scotland 41-0 Tonga
Scotland 50-12 Malaysia
South Africa 36-5 Tonga
Tonga 31-7 Malaysia
South Africa 34-0 Scotland
Pool C
Canada 31-0 Wales
Fiji 52-0 Zambia
Wales 38-5 Zambia
Fiji 19-12 Canada
Canada 24-12 Zambia
Fiji 38-24 Wales
Pool D
Australia 62-0 Jamaica
Kenya 27-14 Uganda
Kenya 45-0 Jamaica
Australia 12-12 Uganda
Uganda 40-0 Jamaica
Australia 7-5 Kenya
