Blitzboks cruise into the quarters

DUBAI: STRETCH THEIR UNBEATEN RUN TO 21 MATCHES

The Springbok Sevens defeated Great Britain 21-7 in their final Pool A match yesterday evening at the Sevens Stadium to finish unbeaten on day one of the second World Rugby Sevens Series tournament in Dubai.

In doing so, the South Africans stretched their current unbeaten run to 21 matches.

Neil Powell’s team will now tackle Kenya this morning in one of the quarterfinal matches (kickoff 8:5o am SA time).

Tries by Zain Davids and Shilton van Wyk gave the Blitzboks an early 14-0 advantage in the first half of their last match of the day at the Dubai 7s.

Alex Davis went over the whitewash just before the break to reduce the deficit to 14-7.

The second half was a tightly contested affair, however, the Britons made things difficult for themselves by having two men sent to the bin for yellow card offences.

It was the fleet-footed Ronald Brown who danced his way through the defence for their third converted try of the match, which sealed the win and top spot in Pool A.

Earlier yesterday, the Blitzboks scored eight tries in their 48-0 victory over Japan to start their quest for a second tournament win in two weeks.

Interestingly, all of the eight tries were scored by a different player, with the Blitzboks scoring 24 unanswered points in each half.

Impi Visser, JC Pretorius, Shilton van Wyk and Siviwe Soyizwapi all got onto the scoresheet after an almost flawless first half, denying Japan any decent scoring chance.

The second half was equally impressive, with Zain Davids, Selvyn Davids, Ronald Brown and Shaun Williams each crossing the whitewash for a comfortable win.

Against the Irish in their second match, the Blitzboks led 7-0 at half-time courtesy of Shilton van Wyk’s converted try.

Selvyn Davids scored shortly after the resumption while Impi Visser also dotted down for a converted try to put the game out of reach of the Irish.