#TuksRugby: Delta Drone TuksWomenRugby Seven’s finishes fourth in Rome

Posted on June 18, 2018

The Delta Drone TuksWomensRugby7’s team finished fourth over the weekend in the Roma Sevens Tournament.

Riaan van der Merwe (coach) admits to it being not one of their better performances. 

“Our most significant handicap was the player’s inexperience. Nadine Roos could not play because she is training with the Springbok Sevens-side. Xandrea Breitenbach had to undergo a knee-injury while Shania-Lee Swart is busy writing exams. 

"To cap it all our captain, Libbie Janse van Rensburg, injured her hip which meant she was not able to run flat-out. She also suffered from a cold. 

“But being Libbie, there was no way that she was going to drop her teammates. She soldiered on throughout the tournament trying to keep the team spirit up.

“Our undoing was that the players were not getting quick enough to the breakdowns. If you don’t, you cannot win. Luckily it is something we can work on during training. We will need to play much better by the time we get to compete at the Paris Cup Tournament (7-8 July),” said Van der Merwe.

The highlight for the Tuks team was beating Spain’s Euskadi’s 26-5. It was the first time in five games that Tuks has managed to do so.

Unfortunately, Tuks got unstuck against Italy losing 25-14. In the semi-final, Kazakhstan outplayed Tuks to win 24-0. The team lost again to Italy in the playoffs for the third place the score being 28-5. Kazakhstan won the tournament. Italy and Kazakhstan are respectively ranked 18th and 19th in the World. 

Meghan Phillips and Liske Lategan (both playing wing) were impressive when they got the ball in hand. 

But as far as Van der Merwe is concerned his forwards, Lolli Hlabangane, Kemi Baloyi and Thandeka Shongwe, were genuinely outstanding throughout the tournament.

- Author Wilhelm de Swardt

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