Injuries to several key players have forced Springbok Sevens coach Paul Treu to make three changes to his squad for the forthcoming HSBC Sevens World Series tournaments in New Zealand and the USA.
The Wellington Sevens tournament takes place on 1-2 February in the New Zealand capital and will be followed by the Las Vegas event a week later.
Regular captain, Kyle Brown (ankle), playmaker Cecil Afrika (knee), Branco du Preez (hamstring), Steven Hunt (ankle) and Ruwellyn Isbell (soft tissue neck injury) are all unavailable because of injury.
Those vacancies have now opened the door to, amongst others, the two 19-year old debutants in Justin Geduldt and Seabelo Senatla. The promising pair, also currently part of the SA Under-20 training squad, both recently signed two-year contracts with SARU to play for the Springbok Sevens.
Pieter Engelbrecht was furthermore preferred over Bernado Botha, who was part of the squad in Port Elizabeth at the Cell C Nelson Mandela Bay Sevens.
Treu said his youthful looking squad is looking forward to the Wellington Sevens challenge.
“The New Zealand tournament is most probably the toughest test of the entire World Series,” explained Treu.
The host country, along with Fiji and Samoa, always get massive support from the crowd, which makes it extremely difficult for the other teams.
“We will have three 19-year olds – Geduldt, Senatla and Cheslin Kolbe – in our travelling squad, so from that perspective it is very exciting and I am delighted for the youngsters. However, they could not have asked for a more daunting challenge and it will be up to them to prove themselves against strong opposition.”
The Blitzbokke are the top seeds in Pool C and will compete against Wales, Samoa and Canada for one of two qualifying spots on offer for the Cup quarterfinals. They leave for New Zealand on Friday.
The Springbok Sevens squad to Wellington and Las Vegas:
Chris Dry, Philip Snyman, Frankie Horne (Captain), Warren Whiteley, Cornal Hendricks, Justin Geduldt, Stephan Dippenaar, Paul Delport, Cheslin Kolbe, Tshotsho Mbovane, Seabelo Senatla, Pieter Engelbrecht.
Who think Paul Treu is shit? Say I
I
1 @ Bliksem:
He has had his time IMO.
They have failed to develop and have become predictable and easy to read. When you’re not blessed with ball players like the Fijians and Samoans you have to continually move forward or you become easy pickings.
Unfortunately I think that’s what has happened.
Every road ends up in the same spot. We have a huge player pool yet we struggle.Its not because we do not have Samoans or whatever. We have the luxury to have some of the fastest blokes in World Rugby. And I did not even mention that we access to Zimbabwe’s players as well who freaklishy fast like Chavanga. But our player pool is being poisoned from the lower ranks by subject no one likes to discuss or ignore it or whatever reason and that is called transformation. That is why the Bulls needs to get the cheque book out. Why the Lions have fallen to a shadow of them former selves and that is why some players in Natal activate resolution 135 of the Banana boy republic which is one of my ancestors have a bit of commonwealth blood in it and chuck of to go play for England and other countries.
Do you know NZ carrot is not money. Is to play for the AB. That is how their contracts work. Because they have made sure its a honor to represent them. Our national teams are becoming like our football team where national colors getting hand out to every tom dick and harry which takes that away.Samoans are basically what we calll in our country flankers loose forwards in which case had abandance of them at a time. Not anymore. Rassie Erasmus Andre Venter, Krige, Gert Smal, Burger Geldenhuys, Ruben Kruger to name a few that was our Samoans. Look at our props. Geez look at our scrums. Our front rowers are 3 guys from Natal! Who in Natal is there to teach Jannie Du Plessis there fine art and secrets of scrumming. That is something front rowers do not speak in public about they pass it over secretly from generation to generation. Somewhere that line was cut off and the only guys who really sit with blokes to help with that do not have financial power to keep them and mold them into feared scrumming machines. Even the English press is asking what had happend to South African rugby.
Then is there there the notion that this previously disavantage groups got skills of the Fikians crossed with the Samoans, speed of apuma, eyes of a hawk and is far superior than any European or whatever they call us. They were denied those opportunities. Which is as fictional as a Star Wars movie.
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