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South Africa intent on giving back to ‘special’ crowd at Cape Town SVNS
By Finn Morton
Walking off the field at Cape Town Stadium after their second loss of the weekend, the Springbok Women’s Sevens received a roaring cheer from their home supporters.
The newly-promoted South Africa side captured the hearts and imagination of rugby fans at last weekend’s SVNS circuit opener in Dubai, which included a thriller against New Zealand.
But playing at your home tournament is something special – every player on the series will tell you that. It just means more to have most of the crowd “supporting you and backing you all the way.”
South Africa opened their Cape Town SVNS campaign with a valiant loss to Dubai bronze medallists France but were handed a big defeat by series heavyweights Canada later on.
Both teams made the Cup semi-finals at last weekend’s SVNS leg in the UAE.
It doesn’t get much tougher, but the South Africans showed a wealth of fight as they looked to make their home fans proud – and that’s exactly what they did.
Fans were cheering and asking for autographs as SVNS star Nadine Roos led her team off the field and down the tunnel at the famed rugby venue.
“It’s always special playing in front of your home crowd. The atmosphere is amazing out there – the support that we get, that carries you out on the field,” Roos told RugbyPass.
“We wanted to give them the performance that we had last week in Dubai but we’re not sticking to what we need to do and we slip away, they’re small margins.
“We just need to regroup and get back together to give this crowd something back.
“We don’t always look at it as an individual, we look at it as a group, and it’s special to play here,” she added.
“It’s always special playing in front of the home crowd, people supporting you and backing you all the way.”
South Africa are down but certainly not out ahead of their third and final pool match against the United States of America on Saturday afternoon.
The new-look SVNS series offers the two best third-placed sides in pool play an opportunity to progress through to the Cup quarter-finals and beyond.
But led by SVNS icon Ilona Maher, last season’s World Sevens Series bronze medallists pose a formidable challenge – but the Boks will have 30,000+ supporters in their corner.
“We just need to regroup now, look at what we can do better as a team and not focus so much on the opponents,” Roos said after the loss to Canada.
“If we can do that, I’m sure the result will speak for itself.”
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Latest Comments
The England backs can't be that dumb, he has been playing on and off for the last couple of years. If they are too slow to keep up with him that's another matter.
He was the only thing stopping England from getting their arses handed to them in the Aussie game. If you can't fit a player with that skill set into an England team then they are stuffed.
Go to commentsSteve Borthwick appointment was misguided based on two flawed premises.
1. An overblown sense of the quality of the premiership rugby. The gap between the Premiership and Test rugby is enormous
2. England needed an English coach who understood English Rugby and it's traditional strengths.
SB won the premiership and was an England forward and did a great job with the Japanese forwards but neither of those qualify you as a tier 1 test manager.
Maybe Felix Jones and Aled Walter's departures are down to the fact that SB is a details man, which work at club level but at test level you need the manager to manage and let the coaches get on and do what they are employed for.
SB criticism of players is straight out of Eddie Jones playbook but his loyalty to keeping out of form players borne out of his perceived sense of betrayal as a player.
In all it doesn't stack up as the qualities needed to be a modern Test coach /Manager
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