National 7s team blames unforced errors for loss

Apr 10, 2017

The defeat in the quarter finals of the qualifying event in Hong Kong only served to magnify all the cracks

Missed opportunities always leave a bad taste in the mouth, at the moment members on the national sevens team have felt it more than anyone following their narrow 10-15 loss to Papua New Guinea.

The defeat in the quarter finals of the qualifying event in Hong Kong only served to magnify all the cracks that had been papered over before the tournament with the addition of new faces to the ranks.

In all the excitement, a lot of those technical bits that can easily go unnoticed when the team is winning ended up becoming the teams Achilles heel.

With every loss comes a lesson learnt but the nature in which the Papua New Guinea result happened will be a little hard to compartmentalize in that category.

The handling errors and the lack of killer instinct by members of the team at the most vital moments, is precisely why the Oceanian country managed to take the victory.

"As players we had poor game management, we didn't manage some of the aspects of the game well like, kicking, decision making which really cost us in the end," Cranes assistant captain Phillip Wokorach said.

"I think increasing technical awareness about game situations for instance, time management, ambition during matches and good leadership should help going forward."

Without a doubt the sevens team, exhibited very many positives, they tried a few things some worked some may not have worked over the weekend but the prognosis is good.

"We have the skills and the focus to compete; just the small aspects affected us. All we need is active participation in tournaments in order to improve," Wokorach pointed out

The team doesn't have enough time to sulk about this one because the tournaments will now come thick and first in the next few months.

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});