Seabelo Senatla feels that the Blitzboks made it “a little bit tough for ourselves” in a 28-10 win over USA, but urged his team to push on at the Cape Town Sevens.
The Americans had thrashed Australia 19-0 in their opening game at the Cape Town Stadium on Saturday and were certainly no pushovers for the Blitzboks.
Werner Kok scored just before halftime to give the South Africans a 14-5 lead, and Senatla dotted down immediately after the break to provide some breathing space.
The Blitzboks are now virtually assured of a Cup quarter-final berth on Sunday after beating Russia 41-0 earlier in the day, and finish off Pool A action against Australia at 7.56pm on Saturday.
“We knew it was going to be tough, taking how they played earlier (into consideration),” Senatla told Independent Media. “They like to make the game loose, and we are more structured on our defence. There are no huge margins, but I must say that we made it a little bit tough for ourselves – it was almost as if we were saying ‘Hey guys, we want to practise our defence, so run around us and try to score some tries’.
“But we got the result in the end. It doesn’t matter how it comes, so long as the ‘W’ keeps coming. It’s not entirely how we would like to play, but it’s not going to be perfect as sevens is not perfect. That’s why I play it, I guess, so that we can keep on working and striving for that perfection.
“Anything can happen against Australia, so we are not even looking at tomorrow. Each step is about pushing ourselves and trying to reach our standards.”
Blitzbok coach Neil Powell also expressed his unhappiness with some of the errors his players made on attack and defence. “Not so happy this last game, we made it difficult for ourselves. We gave the control back to the USA and for us we want to control the game as much as possible,” Powell told the World Rugby website.
“It was a good wake-up call and you always need one or two of those in a tournament. It’s not always going to be perfect though, and we need to give credit to the guys – it was all about the fighting spirit of the guys and they showed that out there.”
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