Philip Snyman believes the Blitzboks can still progress to the play-offs of the Olympic Sevens, despite making ‘schoolboy errors’ in their defeats to New Zealand and Ireland.

The Springbok Sevens’ hopes of claiming a medal at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris are hanging by a thread after suffering successive defeats last night.

In both games against Ireland and New Zealand, the Blitzboks struggled to see much of the ball and had to produce a defensive rearguard to keep themselves in the contest.

Reacting to yesterday’s results, interim head coach Snyman was happy with how his side defended, but said they needed to be braver on attack.

“I think the first game against Ireland, we only had 15% ball possession and you can’t play the game like that and to only lose 10-5, I think the guys defended well,” Snyman was quoted by TimesLive.

“We only kept the ball once for more than three phases and we scored.

“The second game against New Zealand, the guys defended well at stages and once we got the ball we couldn’t put up phases, we made schoolboy errors. We looked like we didn’t want to have the ball, it looked like we didn’t want to attack.”

Snyman’s charges must now beat Japan – who were thrashed 40-5 in their second match of the day – in their final Pool A match today at 16:00, and then hope to qualify for the knock-out round in one of two berths reserved for the best third-place finishers in the pool stage.

“We need to dig deep and we need to look hard at ourselves and get ourselves in a good mental space for tomorrow and make sure we rock up,” Snyman said.

“We can still make it to the quarterfinals, but it’s all up to us. We need to come out with the right mentality and play together as a collective and show what this team can do.”