SOUTH Africa claimed its first 2024 Olympic Games medal in the rugby Sevens yesterday evening when the Blitzboks scored a try at the death to seal a 26-19 win over Australia.
It’s the second bronze the Springbok Sevens side have won at the global showpiece after doing the same at the 2016 Rio Games.
After going up 19-7 and Australia reduced to six players through a red card, it should never have been so tight for Team South Africa to secure the win. They made life difficult for themselves by thinking things would come easily after the sending-off of the Australian captain.
But the loss of captain Nick Malouf after a high shot on Tiaan Pretorius injected some urgency into the Aussie Sevens side and they scored twice through Corey Toole and Henry Paterson after some ordinary play by the South Africans to draw level with seconds left in the game.
Luckily, the Blitzboks kept their cool after winning the final kick-off, and with the extra player Shaun Williams took the defence on to send captain Selvyn Davids over the try line with Davids giving the ball back to Williams to score an Olympic bronze medal try of his own.
Captain Davids scored the first try of Team SA, while veteran forward Zain Davids scored a brace to put the South Africans in control and they should have closed out the game after going up by two scores.
Zain Davids was all over the park in his minutes on the field and his commitment to the cause of the South Africans could not be faulted right through the tournament.
He, alongside his captain, would probably fight it out for South Africa’s player of the tournament, with newbie Tristan Leyds also making some valuable contributions on the attack and with his kicking boot throughout the tournament.
The bronze medal will be a bit of a panacea for the Springbok Sevens after they lost their semi-final contest earlier yesterday.
Their Olympic gold medal campaign ended disappointingly as they lost 19-5 to France in the semis. It was the second time at an Olympic event – after Rio – that Team South Africa were knocked out just before reaching the climax of the global event.
Two crucial defensive errors curtailed the South Africans against the French after they took the lead through a Leyds try, only to let the dream slip away in the second half of the contest.
Things were fairly even throughout the game and the French only really got the upper hand in the late stages of the second half when tired legs started creeping in. Both sides went at each other, but thanks to some good defensive efforts on either side of the halfway line, it wasn’t easy to score points.
But in the second half, the home crowd was fully behind their team and they grew in the game to overpower the Blitzboks’ defence and score three unanswered tries to clinch the clash.