Blitzboks denied fifth place in Singapore

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Argentina punished an ill-disciplined performance from the Blitzboks by handing the South Africans a third successive loss in the Singapore Sevens plate semi-finals on Sunday.

The 22-15 loss means that the Blitzboks missed out on potentially finishing fifth in the tournament, having been knocked out of the cup playoffs by Fiji, who went on to beat rivals New Zealand 28-17 in the final.

Australia finished third after edging the ever-improving Ireland 21-19.

The Blitzboks went to Singapore on the back of four successive tournament wins and successive losses in Singapore made it a memorable weekend for all the wrong reasons.

Against Argentina, the South Africans were again uncharacteristically hesitant in the tackle, struggled to see much of the ball and were not helped by losing Selvyn Davids and Ryan Oosthuizen to a yellow card either side of half time.

For the third match in a row, the Blitzboks fell behind early after veteran Gaston Revol opened the scoring for Argentina, who then punished Davids’ sin-binning as Agustin Fraga scored their second try.

The Blitzboks managed to hit back when JC Pretorius dotted down to make it 12-5 at the break, before Davids atoned for his dismissal by narrowing the score to 12-10 when he pounced on a loose ball, toed it forward and grounded it in the endzone.

But, after Oosthuizen was yellow-carded, Felipe de la Vega and the dangerous Marcos Moneta scored to seal the game for the Argentinians, despite Impi Visser’s late consolation try.

Photo: Yong Teck Lim/Getty Images

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Dylan Jack