Assistant coach Renfred Dazel says the Blitzboks are ready to get up close and personal with Samoa in Sunday’s Cup quarter-finals at the Canada Sevens.

Coming off three consecutive defeats in Singapore last week, South Africa made a strong start to their defence of the Vancouver title on Saturday.

Neil Powell’s men beat Spain, Canada and Australia to top Pool C and book a playoff against Samoa at 8.02pm on Sunday.

The Samoans are always dangerous with ball in hand, but Dazel has reminded the Blitzboks of the islanders’ physicality and dominance in the close quarters.

“We have not played Samoa in a while and only watched them on tape,” the SA coach said.

“One thing is guaranteed and that is the physicality they will bring. They are going to come straight at us and try and dominate the contact areas.”

Dazel added: “For us as coaches, we are pleased with the effort from the players, and we hope we can take this form into the Samoa game.

“We are getting closer to the standard we want to play and we as coaches believe that if we can continue with that, success could not be far off. The players stuck to the plan much better and did what we asked of them as coaches.

“If you look at the Australian match and how we handled them, it shows that the execution was good. We closed their space and executed our tackles. There is always room for improvement, and we can still get better in some areas.”