Wednesday, Oct 23, 2013
Dubai: In the pecking order of international rugby, South Africa sit comfortably among the elite. In the 15-a-side game, they are twice World Cup winners and potential 2015 champions too.
They aren’t bad at sevens, either. After winning the World Series back in 2009, they became pioneers as the first country to set up a full-time centrally-contracted sevens squad, since copied the world over.
The Blitzbokke had a good season last year, but must wish they had reached top gear a little sooner. If they had, the climax to the HSBC Sevens World Series might have been a tense affair, rather than a New Zealand procession.
Consistency has also been an issue. At the Gold Coast tournament two weeks ago — the first round of this year’s HSBC Sevens World Series — they marched through to the semi-finals, lost to Australia and were then thrashed 47-0 by England in the third/fourth play-off.
This trend has been frustrating for their fans, and it will be one of the issues new coach Neil Powell will surely be addressing. A former captain, he has taken over from Paul Treu, who decided to move on at the end of last season. Powell will be looking for a much better performance from the team at this year’s Emirates Dubai Rugby Sevens as last season they failed to make the Cup quarter-finals.
Ironically, Treu could soon find himself plotting the downfall of his former charges in Dubai as the new coach of Kenya. His appointment has been widely expected for weeks, but negotiations are ongoing and nothing is yet clear cut.
Kenyan rugby is growing in strength and their increasingly impressive performances in sevens is doing wonders in terms of putting the game on the map there. The days of Kenya being the whipping boys have long gone and last season they secured a top-five finish in the overall World Series standings for the first time. They reached the final in Wellington last season, beating hosts New Zealand in the semis. And then, to further underline their credentials as one of the top teams, they reached the semi-finals of the World Cup in Russia.
Neither Kenya or South Africa will have a team in the IRB Women’s World Series in Dubai, so it will be left to Tunisia to carry the hopes of Africa. They come here as one of four invited sides.
The Tunisian squad took part in their first ever World Cup campaign this year and, though they lost all four games, just being there was a victory of sorts. Rugby is still a new sport in the North African country, but they have a dream of making the Olympic Games in Rio and encouraging a new generation of young women to take up rugby and popularise the game there.
The Emirates Dubai Rugby Sevens takes place from November 28-30, with 16 nations competing in the HSBC World Series tournament and 12 in the IRB Women’s World Series. Log on to www.dubairugby7s.com
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