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Blitzbokke beaten by NZ

Johannesburg - The Springbok Sevens lost their final Pool B match 19-10 against New Zealand at the Hong Kong Sevens tournament on Saturday.

The team still advanced to the cup quarterfinals, however, where they will face Samoa on Sunday after they finished runners-up in their pool.

The New Zealanders ran in three tries in the first half which was enough for them to secure the top spot in their pool.

They got the match off to a good start with Waisake Naholo scoring within the first minute from the kickoff, with Mark Jackman converting.

Charles Piutau and Jack Wilson also added five points each in the latter part of the first half, with Jackman converting only one of the tries, to take their score to 19-0 going into the half-time break.

The Blitzbokke made a superb start to the second half as the physical Cornel Hendricks got through a tackle to score after 40 seconds of play, with Cecil Afrika converting (19-5).

The New Zealanders could count themselves lucky after Piutau received a lifeline from referee George Clancy who neglected to give him a yellow card for a blatant shoulder charge on Pieter Engelbrecht.

Piutau was finally sin-binned for a tip-tackle but it was another controversial decision as the indiscretion warranted a red card.

The Blitzbokke made reckless mistakes, bad decisions and failed to capitalise on the advantage of having an extra man on the field.

They did well in the end to keep the New Zealanders scoreless in the second half and managing to score a try at the death.

Chris Dry followed a brilliant cross kick from Afrika to score in the right-hand corner but Afrika missed the conversion.

Earlier, the Blitzbokke beat the United States 15-7 as they ran in three tries with Afrika, William Small-Smith and Stephan Dippenaar each scoring a try.


Quarter-final line-up:

Fiji v Argentina
Australia v England
Samoa v South Africa
New Zealand v Wales

Semi-final line-up:

Winner Fiji/Argentina v Winner Australia/England
Winner Samoa/South Africa v Winner New Zealand/Wales
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