Afrika makes a welcome return

The Springbok Sevens team welcomed back Cecil Afrika as coach Paul Treu made three changes for Friday’s Nelson Mandela Bay South Africa Sevens in Port Elizabeth.

After being injured at the Gold Coast tournament, and missing out in Dubai on the squad, Afrika – the International Rugby Board’s Sevens Player of the year - will return to action in front of his home crowd over the two days of action.

Afrika is vital to the Bok cause, as the past two tournaments have shown. While the Blitzbokke have played well in moments, the consistency has eluded them and they have suffered for a lack of flair and vision, choosing to play direct rugby at crucial moments, and paying for the mistakes they made.

Afrika at least brings that bit of individual flair, that unpredictability back into the game, and hopefully the young star is focused on the task at hand, having shaken off his injury problems.

The unlucky player to drop out is Renfred Dazel, and while “Serevi” as he is known in team circles, has done well, he has lost a lot of pace and is hardly the attacking threat he used to be in the shortened game.

The only other change is the inclusion of Cornel Hendricks from Boland. Hendricks showed a lot of pace and impressed while training in Dubai with the Blitzbokke and then took that a step further with some impressive showings for the Dubai Samurai team – which consisted of back-up Blitzbokke players.

Robert Ebersohn, who was unable to reproduce the form that made him a Sevens gamebreaker, returns to the Toyota Cheetahs for Pre-season training, although in his defence it must be said that he seemed under orders to look for contact in the opening two tournaments rather than exploit the space he was sometimes given.

However there has been no explanation why young William Small-Smith – one of the few stars in Dubai – was suddenly left out of the team. Steven Hunt is back in the squad, and Small-Smith, despite his good performance, is out in the cold again. Bernardo Botha, who missed a number of tackles in Dubai at crucial times, can count himself very lucky to still be in the squad for the tournament.

Springbok Sevens captain Kyle Brown said the prospects of playing at home in the new Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium will be a huge motivating factor for the team.

“You only play once at home in nine tournaments so the guys are quite excited to run out in front of our own supporters.

“We did not play to our full potential in either of the previous two tournaments and will be looking to rectify the small mistakes and play to the standards that we have set for ourselves,” said Brown.

The Springbok Sevens team for the Nelson Mandela Bay South Africa Sevens:

Chris Dry

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