Running On Plenty

It’s rugby at its speediest best – Blitzboks coach Neil Powell talks about his team’s success and the sport’s growing popularity.

- Richard Van Rensburg

THEY showed again why they’re the darlings of South African rugby fans and why they’re thought of as the team bringing excitement back to the game.

Although they’ve already attained star status among their fans, the Blitzboks recently cemented their position by winning their fourth tournament in the World Series in Las Vegas, USA.

Fans were treated to the kind of entertaining, pacey running rugby they’ve come to love at the series and thousands tuned in to see the exciting action unfold.

Little wonder sevens rugby is growing in popularity around the globe – the shorter format’s new Olympic status at the Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, last year earned it roughly 17 million new fans worldwide.

It was the first time since 1924 that rugby was contested at an Olympic Games. Even the Chinese are now honing sevens and 15-men teams.

South Africans are relishing the prospect of the Blitzboks perhaps landing a second World Series title after their first win in 2008/09 and driving the final nail into the coffin of the Kiwis’ sevens dreams.

We have reason to hope so because coach Neil Powell’s team now have a comfortable lead against their closest rival, Fiji, on the World Series log.

A STELLAR YEAR

Of the season’s five Sevens World Series tournaments so far, the Blitzboks have won four – Dubai, Wellington, Sydney and Las Vegas – and in the South African tournament in Cape Town they were beaten 19-17 by England in the final.

But we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves, Powell warned when we tracked him down at the Sevens headquarters at the Stellenbosch Academy of Sport (SAS) shortly before their departure for the Las Vegas tournament at the beginning of the month.