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Blitzboks coach Ngcobo calls team’s LA effort ‘disrespectful to badge, country’
“It seemed that complacency crept in and that the guys were just going through the motions expecting things to happen, instead of going there and making it happen."
Fiji’s Josua Vakurinabili scores a try against South Africa in the LA Sevens. Picture: Patrick T Fallon / AFP
Blitzboks coach Sandile Ngcobo has not minced his words regarding his team’s poor showing in the LA Sevens tournament at the weekend.
While the SA Sevens team are still well-placed in the Sevens series standings (top four) they lost in pool play in Los Angeles to Uruguay and Ireland and in the playoffs to Fiji (28-7) and Samoa (45-5).
The performance against Samoa has been described by Ngcobo as unacceptable and completely devoid of effort.
‘Disrespectful’
“It was almost heart breaking for me to watch from the sidelines as there was no effort at all from the players, and that hurts as the badge that we play for does not deserve that, neither do our supporters or our country,” said Ngcobo.
“It seemed that complacency crept in and that the guys were just going through the motions expecting things to happen, instead of going there and making it happen.
“A performance like this is disrespectful to our badge and to our country and we will have to have an extremely hard look at ourselves.”
Ngcobo added he, too, would need to do some introspection.
“I will have to ask myself why and how we delivered such a poor performance and how can we fix that,” he said. “Yes, we did play in the final in the previous tournament in Sydney, but that counted for nothing, we had to start at zero again, but we never did.”
Vancouver next
Ngcobo said there was no fight in his squad and that was most disappointing, especially against Samoa.
“In that last game against Samoa, they kept giving us possession (from restarts) and we kept giving it away and missing tackles,” said Ngcobo.
“That was just a lack of effort and disrespect. The game for me is 20 percent physical and 80 percent mental and we just did not pitch mentally. The system deserves better, and we will have to regroup with Vancouver (HSBC Canada Sevens) only five days away.”
Standings
New Zealand 107, Argentina 86, South Africa 86, Fiji 84, Samoa 81, Australia 77, France 76, USA 69, Ireland 68, Great Britain 47
