Durban — It has been a difficult build-up to his first tournament in charge of the Blitzboks, but Sandile Ngcobo is confident they can “adapt and execute” in the Hong Kong Sevens which starts on Friday.
Ngcobo has had one challenge after another in getting the Blitzboks ready for their first tournament since the departure of Neil Powell.
They have had training sessions suspended because of tropical storms; a strict tournament hotel bubble; and having to wait 24 hours before kick-off to know whether anyone in the squad delivered a positive Covid-19 test.
And for good measure, they have a new qualifier of the World Sevens Series as their first opponent on the opening day (Uruguay), but Ncobo says they will embrace all of these challenges.
“We have a slogan of adapt and execute. It is nothing new to the squad, in fact, we first used it when the pandemic was causing great uncertainty about tournaments and training programmes. We are still applying that principle and here in Hong Kong, it proved handy as we were thrown some curve balls. We did not allow those to bother us, the team just adapted and I really believe they will execute at the tournament,” Ncobo said.
His belief comes from the experience of the squad. Seven of the squad had series gold medals hung around their necks and all 13 were part of the wider squad that prepared for Commonwealth Games gold earlier this year.
“We are just so happy to be out there again and that joy, coupled with doing the basics well, will help us a lot when we start against Uruguay. The aim is a simple one, we want to compete at the highest level and we want to compete hard,” Ngcobo said.
“As a coach, I am confident about the squad that was selected and their abilities, so we approach this tournament with a positive mindset. The beauty and reality of this game is that giants fall, and underdogs rise as every team can beat another on the day. So we need to be very sharp from the start, Uruguay will come hard. So we need to be ready for that,” Ngcobo said.
“The Great Britain side will also be an interesting opponent as they bring the flavours of the English, Welsh and Scots, so it will be difficult to plan for them. With France, they love throwing the ball around, so if it is going to rain as predicted when we play them, one needs to adapt to that. But we are not looking at the opponents too much, rather at us executing the style we want to bring.”
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