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‘Own worst enemy’: Australia survive quarter-final scare at Cape Town SVNS

Players of Australia celebrate after their teams victory over New Zealand in the tournament final during day 2 of HSBC Dubai Sevens at Sevens Stadium on December 3, 2023 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. (Photo by Gaspafotos/MB Media/Getty Images)

Dubai SVNS champions Australia were their “own worst enemy” in an enthralling quarter-final win over Ireland on Sunday morning in Cape Town with the Aussies sneaking through in a thriller.

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Australia took the lead in the opening minute as rapid winger Faith Nathan raced down the right touchline for the first try of the knockout clash, and Maddison Levi added another shortly after.

But Ireland weren’t going to throw in the towel without putting up at fight at the Western Cape venue, with the underdogs hitting back through a Beibhinn Parsons brace.

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With the sun beaming down from the heavens on a humid Sunday morning, an upset was certainly on the cards as the full-time siren began to warm up with just three points separating the teams.

But a match-winning breakaway from SVNS veteran Dominique Du Toit paved the way for Maddison Levi’s second score of the contest, with the Aussies holding on for a 24-14 win.

“Our motto at the moment is ‘you’re either winning or you’re learning’ and I think we definitely had a bit of both in that game,” Du Toit told RugbyPass.

“We started off not the best with our restart reception but got a try on the board early and it was just a bit of up and down.

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“We were kind of our own worst enemy (by) dropping balls in crucial moments and a few missed tackled on the inside shoulder but we know how to fight, we got in the end.

“I’m proud of the girls for fighting through that in the end.

“We’re still working on our worst moments still being pretty good… being able to win ugly is good.”

With their Cape Town SVNS dream hanging in the balance, the Aussies needed a hero to stand up and answer the call as Ireland risked knocking the tournament favourites out in the quarters.

Dominique Du Toit’s game-changing line break was a decisive moment in not just the contest but the tournament as a whole, but the 26-year-old was “sad” not to go the distance herself.

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Du Toit could “feel” and “see” Ireland Irish defender Amee-Leigh Murphy Crowe chasing in sheer desperation, but try-scoring phenom Maddison Levi was vocal in support.

“I’m fortunate now that I have a lot of experience behind my back, I’ve been playing for nine or 10 years,” Du Toit added.

“It was a bit sad I didn’t get there – I wasn’t as fast as I would’ve liked it to be but Mads’ (Maddison Levi) support is unreal. She’s usually the one flying away on her own.

“She’s scoring multiple every game, she’s an unbelievable player. She hit her 100 yesterday and I think she had 15 caps which I think is the fastest anybody’s been able to hit 100 tries which is unreal.”

But in a tough blow, and with just eight seconds to run on the clock, the Aussies were left devastated as leader Demi Hayes was helped from the field with what appeared to be a significant injury.

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“We’re still unsure exactly what it is.

“Absolutely devastated for her to be injured in any capacity but I think we just need to stick together as a team, get behind her and take it as it comes.”

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1 Comment
K
KELLY 377 days ago

IRB 7s CURCUIT;
 
Hopefully the World Rugby 7s rugby circuit RE imagine their format even more and change the way they format their games very soon, so all the top teams play each other often. Otherwise why watch the 7s IRB rugby circuit when it’s not a real competition.
 
This new IRB format is a nonsense format and is much worse than the old IRBs formatted circuit, because no teams form or consistency counts until the last round. Like having 30 odd practice games. As none of the first six tournaments within ranks really count for anything, as the top eight teams make the final anyway. Which means the top four teams from the first six rounds of the 7s rugby IRB circuit are meaningless. As those teams could come 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th in the IRBs 7s circuits FINAL round.
 
The old IRB ladder system was much better ranking system that at-least found the most consistent team as the IRB’s FINALIST!
 
Especially when the past IRBS 7s format usually meant that only the top teams could win this bias tournament, which makes the Worlds rugby 7s circuit very boring!
 
Presently the IRB champions aren’t the real champions as a team of champions beats a big pool of evenly ranked teams at every IRB circuit, that aren't necessarily the teams that make final. Making the comp worth watching because presently winning on the World Rugbies 7s circuit depends on who you play, and even those games are all meaningless until the last round. Making the game a shame not a game!
 
By having all of their IRB 7s series top 12 teams put in TWO pools of six teams, ranked in each pool from the previous IRB sevens ladder standings. POOL ONE 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11: POOL TWO 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12:
 
Would create a real competition as then all the IRB circuit teams would regularly play each other. Then have all the teams by rank from each pool play the other pools teams by rank. Meaning Pool A’s ranked teams would play Pool B’s teams by rank, all the way down to the 6th ranked team in both Pools.
 
Ie Pool A 1st versus Pool B 1st, Pool A 2nd versus Pool B 2nd, 3rd versus 3rd – 4th versus 4th -5th versus 5th – 6th versus 6th. Which means each team would play six games each to get ranked correctly. Which would be great spectator wise. Which is 66 odd competitive games spread over two/three days.
 
Or 132 games in the men’s and women’s divisions held over 2/3/4 days, should be accomplishable. With 14 manned squads for nutrition and two or three rugby fields at each location?
 
And by having the bottom four teams after the IRB circuit having to challenge the top two teams from the challenging series. Would create a pool of 6 teams playing in a round robin or three to make the top four as core teams. To RE merge with the IRBs top 8 IRB teams for the next years IRB circuit. Giving the new challenging teams ‘time’ to develop their game!
 
They also need to evolve the rules of the game to speed the game up a heap to save time to score more tries, the games have become predictable and boring!
 
Making the 7s IRB circuit very good to watch that would eventually pay for itself, ‘you’d think!
 MENS POOLS:
                  POOL ONE;-----------------POOL TWO;
 
1st NEW ZEALAND------------------2nd ARGENTINA
3rd FRANCE---------------------------4th FIJI 5th AUSTRALIA-----------------------6th SAMOA
7th SOUTH AFRICA------------------8th IRELAND 9th USA---------------------------------10th GREAT BRITIAN
11th SPAIN----------------------------12th CANADA
 WOMEN’S POOLS
 POOL ONE;-----------------POOL TWO;
 
1st NEW ZEALAND------------------2nd AUSTRALIA 3rd USA--------------------------------4th FRANCE
5th IRELAND-------------------------6th FIJI
7th GREAT BRTIAN-----------------8th JAPAN
9th CANADA-------------------------10th SPAIN 11th BRAZIL-------------------------12TH CHINA
 
By Adopting these six 7s rugby ELVS would mean all the squads on the World rugbies 7s rugby circuit could win a tournament or two. And would stop the IRB circuit’s predictable boring outcomes?
 
Who wants to watch a one-sided comp where many squads can’t win it because of its rules? What are ELVs for. These rules would speed the game up and improve its spectacle tenfold. In the order they’re in?
 
The IRB sevens squads need to have 14 in their squads to have a seven manned bench to help rehydrate the team if these five 7s EVLs were used?
 
1/ If the TMO was used as a stop clock at the moment a try was scored to when the try scoring team restarts. That would stop probably two minutes of dead time per game as a team could ‘not’ run down the TMO clock while converting a try to win.
 
2/ Seven points awarded for a try under the posts, would save a lot of time, to get more tries.
 
3/ All conversions to be taken by the person who scored the try, even if it’s a forward because a scrubbed conversion by a forward would create plenty of time for an extra try or six. Making it far easier to get six quick unconverted tries to win, than to get 4 converted tries to ‘WIN’ a game.
 
4/ Having one-minute yellow cards for all deliberate knocks-ons and for some cynical game momentum changing fouls, that stops a try from being scored. Would suit any team as having two-minute ‘yellow cards’ is far too long and destroys the games spectacle.
 
5/ Having two-minute replacement red cards” for dangerous play, and put that player on TMO ‘RE view for a game or for a few game suspensions.
 
6/ Use the drop goal-line drop-out. Which should already be a law as it’s very hard in sevens rugby to hold a player up over the goal-line, and that type of defence deserves a break. To get to kick the ball away from their goal-line!

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J
JW 2 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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