SA rugby 7s - a matter of time?

It has interested me greatly to see the SA 7s rugby side playing recently. From a sport that used to get a small corner article in the daily papers, it's now getting a huge amount of attention, and for the first time there is real expectation that we should succeed rather than a pleasant surprise every time we win a tournament. This expectation is clearly based on the past successes and the appreciation that Paul Treu and his management really know what they are doing.

I have always been an advocate of the fact that having the right people involved in any team is the first and most important thing, but then also in having them complement each other well. The whole then equalling more than the sum of its parts. Now looking at this team this year, it shows huge difference from last year, with (on my rough count) at least 6 regulars missing. Now take that many people out of any team and there is sure to be a rebuilding phase, especially out of a team that only consists of 12 players. The team is in a phase where they are all having to re-form and discover what roles they all have to play to get the team to the stage where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Already there has been an incident with Ryno Benjamin, but this in my opinion just shows teething problems of a forming team and one where people are trying to work out who needs to do what.


Whether the new players picked are the 'right' people only time will tell, and this will be very important to the success of the team. But I firmly believe this team is now in a forming stage and should not be expected to perform at nearly as high a level as last year. And that's not even taking into account that a number of the other teams in the competition are starting to improve and take the game more seriously!

Cheers