South Africa’s Springbok Sevens team, known as the Blitzboks, won the Las Vegas sevens tournament on the weekend, making it their fourth title in five tournaments so far this year, giving them a decisive 23-point lead at the top of the HSBC World Sevens Series standing.
Interestingly, the one out of the five tournaments thus far that the South Africans did not manage to win came in Cape Town, their home tournament, where they lost in the final to a determined England side.
The victory in Las Vegas was the Blitzboks’ third title in a row after lifting the trophies in Wellington and Sydney. They also the first tournament of the season in Dubai before their second-place finish in Cape Town.
The latest victory puts the South Africans in a great position to continue their drive towards winning the World Sevens Series for only the second time in their history, and a first under current coach Neil Powell.
Despite the dominance shown in previous tournaments this year, the South Africans were made to work hard to secure the Las Vegas title, as they would take one narrow win after the next on their way to the final against last year’s World Sevens Series champions, Fiji.
After moving on from the group stages of the competition, the Springbok Sevens beat Australia 17-14 in the quarter-finals on Sunday, before an equally tight 20-17 victory over home team the USA in the semi-finals led the South Africans to the ultimate showdown against their most fierce rivals.
The match against Olympic champions Fiji ended 19-12 in favour of the Blitzboks, but the match was a fiercely contested affair, and could easily have gone the other way.
With five tournaments left in the current season, the Blitzboks are well on their way to securing overall victory at the halfway mark, and the stats speak volumes about their dominance thus far in the campaign.
The Springbok Sevens have now won 28 of their last 30 matches in the series, with only two losses to England keeping them from a perfect record. South Africa are also the leading try scorers thus far this season, with 129 tries at an average of 4.3 per match.
