The Delta Drone TuksWomensRugby7's lost out yesterday in the dying minutes in defending the Stanislas Sevens-title they won last year in Nancy, France.

With less than a minute left to play in the final, the Tuks-team was leading 14-12 against Poland. Unfortunately, there is a good reason for the saying about a certain “Fat Lady that needs to sing”.  A Polish player was on the attack. Libbie Janse van Rensburg (Tuks captain) tackled her. The ball was lost forward. 

According to Riaan van der Merwe (coach), the referee indicated the knock on but allowed play to continue that enabled Poland to score and win the tournament. The final score was 17-14.

Both Van der Merwe and Janse van Rensburg are disappointed about the outcome, but they also know that the reality of any sport is that you got to be able to take the good with the bad. 

“There are a lot of positives we can take from the tournament. The most important is the way the newcomers played. They stepped up to the plate and that is exciting in us going forward. However, we need to work on some specifics of our game. Most importantly is our play on defence. During the final, we missed tackles at crucial moments. We can’t expect to win tournaments if we give away soft tries,” said Janse van Rensburg.

Tuks scored a massive 133 points in their three pools games while only conceding one try. In the quarterfinals, they beat Georgia 42-0. The score in the semi-final game against Sweden’s Jesters was 35-0 which means in the whole tournament Tuks only conceded four tries, three of which was in the final.

Nadine Roos who played for South Africa during the Commonwealth Games scored 12 tries while Janse van Rensburg scored nine and succeeded with 32 nine conversions. She is proud of the fact that during the last three games she did not miss one conversion.

According to Van der Merwe he is not sure when last a player had 100% success rate as a kicker in one day.

From tomorrow the Delta Drone TuksWomensRugby7's will be competing in the Centrales Sevens Tournament in Paris. 

It is going to be a real test for the abilities of the Tuks players as the national teams of Wales, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Ukraine, Georgia are playing as well as in some of the top club teams of the Netherlands and Australia. Tuks finished 6th last year. 

Janse van Rensburg said what might count against Tuks is that they only have one day to recover before playing again. 

“Our bodies have taken a lot of strain over the weekend which means we won’t start with fresh legs, but I still think we will be able to win our pool games. What will happen from then on could be interesting.”