Four Springbok Sevens players will undergo medical assessments on Wednesday afternoon to determine the extent of injuries they suffered at the HSBC Sevens World Series tournament in Las Vegas the past weekend.
Immediately after the Cup Final in Las Vegas, coach Paul Treu Tweeted the following:
This immediately sent up red flags for this fan. Turns out that Chris Dry (knee), Boom Prinsloo (head), Mark Richards (pectoral muscle) and Cornal Hendricks (shoulder) all suffered injuries of various degrees in Las Vegas.
To add to the injury woes, Paul Delport underwent a successful minor operation to repair his damaged cheekbone and team management will monitor his recovery efforts on a weekly basis.
The squad arrives on Wednesday morning from the United States and the injured players will head straight for the team headquarters in Stellenbosch where they will undergo medical examinations.
SA Sevens coach, Paul Treu, and some of his management staff will stay behind in the USA for a few days where they will visit other sporting codes.
South Africa won the Plate in New Zealand and finished fourth in the United States and the team managed to move one place to third on the World Series log.
Speaking from Las Vegas, Treu said basic errors led to the team’s undoing in both the fourth and fifth leg of the World Series.
“It has been a tough two weeks on the road and our current third place on the log is probably a true reflection of our efforts in Wellington and Las Vegas,” said Treu.
“At the moment, we are losing to the best (NZ) and second best team (Fiji) in the world and it’s frustrating to know you come so close every time, yet have very little to show for it.
“Our defense and tackling let us down and basic errors cost us dearly during both tournaments. Once again, we had opportunities in both Wellington and Las Vegas, but we conceded costly turnovers that led to 95m tries – which is totally unacceptable,” added Treu.
Cecil-cam
One player who had another cracker of a tournament was the 2011 IRB and South African Sevens Player of the Year Cecil Afrika. The livewire BlitzBok capped a very good individual performance in the United States by scoring seven tries, which landed him the highest try scorer accolade.
I remember a commentator saying: “I wish we had an individual camera following Afrika around the park cause he’s just all over the place! ” Well, if any network was to do this we’ll simply call it the Cecil-cam.
Legendary picture. Susan Sylvia Gordon snapped Cecil (l) and Rennie Dazel (r) with the legendary Fijian Sevens star Waisale Serevi. Interesting to note that all three aren’t particularly tall…
The teams now have a six break before the Cathay Pacific / HSBC Hong Kong Sevens from 23 to 25 March and the Tokyo Sevens on 31 March and 1 April.
Here are some images of the BlitzBokke in action in Vegas:
Marele Joubert Strydom, a Bok fan who lives in the States, shared the following fan-pics with us:
For all the latest from the HSBC Sevens World Series and the Springbok Sevens Team, add @BlitzBokke on Twitter. You can also LIKE our FaceBook Page.
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