Dubai: New Zealand’s interim coach Tomasi Cama blamed poor preparation for his side’s shock early exit at the hands of South Africa in the Dubai Rugby Sevens on Saturday.
The All Blacks are record 12-time World Series and six-time Dubai champions, but were humbled 40-0 by the Springboks in Saturday’s cup quarter-final. It was after they qualified second in Group C on Friday with wins over Russia 26-5 and Samoa 26-21, before a 26-12 defeat to England.
South Africa were 19-0 ahead at half-time after three tries from Cecil Afrika, Seabelo Senatla and Kyle Brown, with two conversions from Branco du Preez.
The Springboks then added three more tries in the second half from Chris Dry, Justin Geduld and Werner Kok, with two conversations from Geduld and one from Afrika to complete the barrage.
“We had a week to get together, that’s not a lot of time and obviously the boys haven’t been playing any sevens at all since the Olympics, so we were behind from the get go,” said Cama, who, along with Scott Waldrom, has taken temporary charge of New Zealand following Sir Gordon Tietjens’ departure before Clark Laidlaw takes over full-time in January.
“It’s pleasing to make the top eight considering we were in a pool of death. But we got taught a good lesson that if you come underprepared at this level that’s what you’re going to get.
“We’ll certainly learn from this and look at not only our performance but how we can prepare better for the next tournament.”
Cama skirted around questions on whether the team were missing the talismanic presence of their former coach Tietjens, who spent 22-years at the helm before joining Samoa after the Olympics. “I guess it was down to a lot of things,” he said. “We weren’t smart enough at the start of the game, we had a plan to execute out there but things do change and you have to adapt.
“Other than that here are no excuses. South Africa are a good team and executed all their players well, obviously we are very disappointed with that performance but we have to learn from that and move on.
“We have to build on what we achieved yesterday [Friday]. There are hardly any positives out of that game [against South Africa] but now we’ve got to look at the tape and prepare for the next game.”
The defeat to England, Cama said, wasn’t where confidence had been lost. “If you look at the tape we created enough opportunities but didn’t execute. That’s for the players out there to create opportunities and then take their chances, because against good teams those opportunities are hard to come by.
“The boys were flat in their warm-up today and that’s something we’ll take into account for the next game. We’ve another game coming up after this and don’t want to dwell on the last game too much, we want to focus on the things we can fix and carry on next week in Cape Town.”
