News24.com | Blitzboks coach slams lacklustre players in LA horror show: 'No effort, disrespectful to our badge'

Sandile Ngcobo

• Springbok Sevens coach Sandile Ngcobo was not happy with the efforts of his players at the LA Sevens.
• The Blitzboks suffered heavy defeats to Samoa and Fiji, having earlier lost to Uruguay and Ireland in the pool stages.
• Ngcobo said the performance was "disrespectful to our badge and to our country".

Springbok Sevens coach Sandile Ngcobo hit out at his players' effort after their horror show at the LA Sevens this past weekend.

The Blitzboks were hammered 45-5 by Samoa in the 5th-place semi-final on Sunday. It capped a horror weekend in Los Angeles for the South Africans.

Ngcobo's charges were thumped 28-7 by Fiji in the Cup quarter-finals, and also lost 10-5 to Uruguay and 14-5 to Ireland in pool play. Their only win was a 12-0 success over Canada in their opening game.

"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,” Ngcobo said.

"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 acknowledged that he will also 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."

Ngcobo said there was no fight in his squad and that was most disappointing, especially against Samoa where they conceded seven tries.

"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 (Canada Sevens) only five days away."

Meanwhile, New Zealand won the LA Sevens crown with a 22-12 win over Argentina in the Cup final.

It was the All Blacks Sevens' second victory of the 2023 World Rugby Sevens Series.

The Cup final triumph extended New Zealand's lead atop the series standings to 107 points after six events, 21 points clear of Argentina in second place.

The Blitzboks are third, also on 86 points, but with a worse points differential.