By: Ashfak Mohamed
It wasn’t a slick display, but the Blitzboks began their journey to a possible gold medal by overcoming Spain 24-0 on the opening day of the Rio Olympics rugby tournament on Tuesday afternoon.
The Springbok Sevens side made a good enough start, with superstar Seabelo Senatla nearly getting away from the tough-tackling Spanish defence as he was scragged into touch.
But the South Africans worked hard on their breakdown technique during their month-long training camp in Stellenbosch recently, and it paid off as captain Kyle Brown went in hard over the ball to win a penalty.
That set up the opening try to Cecil Afrika as Juan de Jongh took the quick tap and the ball was flung out wide to the dreadlocked Afrika, who beat the cover defence to open the scoring.
Afrika didn’t leave it there as he also slotted the touchline conversion, a crucial kick as every point counts in the race to top Pool B, after France produced a huge upset in beating Australia 31-14 in the opening game of the group.
Brown was at it again a few minutes later as he got his clutches on another Spanish attacker to win the breakdown penalty, but some sloppy passing by the South Africans led to the Blitzboks skipper being bundled into touch.
The Spaniards never gave up and disrupted Neil Powell’s team with their rush defence, with Justin Geduld losing the ball in the tackle when it looked like he was on his way to the tryline.
But Afrika made up for that miss by dotting down again on the stroke of halftime to give the Blitzboks a 14-0 lead, which was a body blow to the Spanish outfit.
It didn’t take long after the break for speedster Senatla - who topped the World Series try-scorers’ list with 66 - to score his first five-pointer at the Deodoro Stadium as Geduld showed his class in holding on to the ball just long enough to draw the defence before he put Senatla over in the corner.
There was again some iffy passing by the Blitzboks in the last few minutes, but they ended off things in style as barnstorming loose forward Tim Agaba burst through a few tackles to take South Africa in behind the Spanish defence.
Senatla and Afrika were stopped just short of the tryline, but the ball squirted out from a ruck and Philip Snyman scooped it up to score his team’s fourth try.
Coach Powell will be glad that his players got through the undoubted nerves of a first Olympic match with a victory, but would want to see greater intensity and precision on attack if they want to prevent France from pulling off another giant-killing victory in their clash at 9.30pm SA time on Tuesday night.
The Blitzboks round off their Pool B programme against Australia on Wednesday (4.30pm kickoff) before the quarter-final later on the same day.
POINTS-SCORERS
South Africa - Tries: Cecil Afrika (2), Seabelo Senatla, Philip Snyman. Conversions: Afrika (2).
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