Blitzboks chase Hong Kong win

• Injury-hit world Sevens leaders anxious to capture elusive title

The Blitzboks will regroup over the next 14 days as they prepare to win the one title they have not captured in the HSBC World Sevens Series – Hong Kong. The Blitzboks are runaway leaders at the top of the overall standings after six rounds of the 2016-17 season.

The Blitzboks will regroup over the next 14 days as they prepare to win the one title they have not captured on the HSBC World Sevens Series – Hong Kong.

The South Africans are runaway leaders at the top of the overall standings after six rounds of the 2016-17 season‚ with England 23 points behind with only four rounds to play.

In the early hours of Monday, England beat SA for the third time in five meetings this season in the final of the Vancouver leg of the series. England won the match 19-7 against an injury-hit Blitzboks but are still far behind SA on the overall standings.

Earlier, the teams met in Pool play and the match ended 12-12‚ which allowed SA to top the group and play Canada in the last eight.

“It does seem that we have a problem against England. We will have to go and look at how and where to do things better when we face them‚” said coach Neil Powell.

The Blitzboks duly thrashed Canada 36-7 in the quarterfinals and had to dig deep on defence to beat the US 14-10 in the semifinal.

England eked out a 14-12 quarterfinal win against New Zealand and followed that with an emphatic 40-7 win over reigning World Series Champions Fiji in the semifinals.

While the final result was a disappointment for the Blitzboks‚ the fact they made their sixth consecutive final of the season again underlined their consistency.

They have so far won in Dubai‚ Wellington‚ Sydney and Las Vegas and finished runnersup in Cape Town and Vancouver (both times losing to England).

They have claimed 126 log points out of a possible 132 in 2017 and are well set to win their first World Series title since 2009. Powell did not view defeat in Vancouver as failure.

“If anyone offered me that [41 out of a possible 44 points on the North American leg] before the trip‚ I would have taken it‚” Powell said.

“From that perspective‚ was a very good trip for us.

“Today, we did not play well though. We started well against Canada‚ but that was our only proper performance. We were not clinical enough on attack and did not keep the ball long enough before being turned over again,” he said.

“We used one of our opportunities‚ but three times, we surrendered possession unnecessarily it and England scored. You cannot win finals playing like that and you cannot expect to beat a good team like England playing like that.”

Looking to Hong Kong‚ the Blitzboks will hope key players recover quickly. The team lost Justin Geduld and Stephan Dippenaar before the start of the tournament in Vancouver.

They also played in the final without Branco du Preez‚ who injured a pectoral muscle early on Sunday. They suffered a further blow in the final when Roscko Speckman hobbled off with a leg injury.

“We still need to do medicals‚ but it seems that we will lose a number of players and might need to travel to Hong Kong with a much younger squad,” said Powell.

“We have some hard work ahead of us.” /