Placed in a tough Pool A consisting of Samoa, France and Australia and missing vital players due to injury with their places filled with youngsters, most pundits were cautiously pessimistic for the Blitzbokke’s chances of winning Pool A.
Today’s first game was against the current number two placed team, Samoa (joint second with Fiji and Kenya). Billed as a crunch game, South Africa stamped their mark all over the game and only allowed Samoa to proceed out of their own half once during the entire game.
Chris Dry had an outstanding game with a hat-trick of tries and SA won 29-7.
Up next South Africa met France whose Paul Albaladejo proceeded to open the scoring and put South Africa 5-0 down. Cornal Hendricks took advantage of the absence of Manoel Dall Igna of France – yellow card – to even the score up. Paul Delport from South Africa then crashed over under the poles close to the death to haul South Africa to a 12-5 victory.
Paul Treu was full of praise for his young team and stressed that this was a two day series and not a once off match.
Frankie Horne was happy with his day at the office saying; “There are no easy games anymore, a win is a win”, and “We want to top our pool”. With reference to Port Elizabeth playmaker, Cecil Afrika, Frankie said, “Even Cecil on crutches is still a quality player!”
Asked about SA’s upcoming physical game against Australia, Frankie said; “It is always going to be physical against Australia, they are like wild dogs and they hunt you down!”
South Africa played the second last game on the programme against Australia and dominated a very physical game with a try apiece from Cecil Afrika, Chris Dry and Frankie Horne to seal the victory on 17 points against Australia’s seven.
South Africa now top Pool A and play their fist match against United States at 12:39 pm on Sunday 9 December.
