Cape Town Sevens: Springbok Women banking on home crowd

The Springbok Women’s Sevens team is confident they can perform even better at the Cape Town Sevens than they did at the Dubai tournament last weekend.

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READY TO FIRE IN THE MOTHER CITY

The South Africans came within seven points of both New Zealand and Fiji in Dubai and given the average scoreline of 40-0 against New Zealand in all previous matches and the 59-0 drubbing Fiji handed them in their last encounter, the Springbok Women’s Sevens showed a vast improvement.

However, for Afrika, there is still more work ahead for the team as they will line up against Canada, France, and USA in the pool stages of the Cape Town Sevens on Saturday.

“It’s actually more fine-tuning than changing anything for us this week,” the former Blitzbok Afrika said after the team’s training session at UCT.

“We’ll get better as we go along and pick up experience. We came so close, but our decision-making under fatigue was a problem.”

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Afrika added the team will look to secure their breakdowns more effectively as well this weekend.

“We need to protect our ball a bit better and have more patience on attack,” Afrika said. “We create the opportunities but don’t always finish them. We are still learning and will make better decisions. It’s part of growing pains.”

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CAPE TOWN SEVENS CROWD A SOURCE OF INSPIRATION

Afrika said the next challenge for the team will be to get straight back into action, despite their aching bodies.

“We have home-ground advantage – something no other team will have,” he said. “The squad will be reminded of our vision and goals for the season and also what we want to achieve in our home tournament. Then we’ll be good to go again.”

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