Blink twice and JC Pretorius is gone
Pretorius made his debut against Tonga, with a 45-5 victory helping him to a win in in his first match for the Blitzboks
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, January 28, 2020/ -- It feels as if he has been around for ages, but it is only a year
ago that a fresh-faced JC Pretorius made his international debut for the Springbok Sevens team in the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series.
Pretorius turned 21 just before the 2019 HSBC Sydney Sevens and
celebrated that milestone with his international debut, where he
immediately showed immense appetite for rugby at this level.
Hardly had he blown out the candles on his birthday cake in the team
room, and Pretorius made his debut against Tonga, with a 45-5 victory
helping him to a win in in his first match for the Blitzboks, despite
only getting a minute of action on the field.
In his second match, a 25-10 win over Argentina, Pretorius got four
minutes of action. His first defeat with the team came against
Australia, when the hosts edged the Blitzboks 29-21 after leading 17-7
at the break in their final pool match.
And on the second day of action last year in Sydney, Pretorius got his
first start in the green and gold, when England won 26-5, but the
Blitzboks ended the tournament with a 12-10 win over Australia to claim
fifth place overall.
Since then, Pretorius has played in Las Vegas, Vancouver (before injury
ruled him out of Hong Kong and Singapore), London, Paris, Dubai, Cape
Town and Hamilton, and he experienced tournament victories in Canada and Dubai, scoring 16 tries in 43 matches.
More importantly, the former flanker who turns 22 on Wednesday, has now
claimed the starting berth and is one of the first names Neil Powell
dots down on his team sheet, but he still sees every tournament and
every match as a learning curve.
“I certainly came a long way since last year when I took over from Kyle
Brown,” said Pretorius, who hails from Secunda but matriculated at HTS
Middelburg, the same school his sevens idol, Kwagga Smith.
“You learn something new every day and in every match on the World
Series. That is what is so great about playing sevens. With the margins
so small, you can never be 100%. Every match and every tournament are a
new test of your abilities and where you need to improve.”
The devil is in the detail, he feels: “We had some time on the flight
from New Zealand to look at the mistakes that cost us in Hamilton and it really was small things.
“Those small things broke our momentum though, so we need to fix that.
It is the attention to detail that was lacking, so it is something we
can sort before the weekend.
“We are pretty lucky as players in the Blitzboks team. We have a proven
system and if everyone follows the processes, we are a very effective
team. That will be the focus for the weekend, to just make sure you
execute within your role,” added Pretorius.
Pretorius said that when the Blitzboks take the field against Argentina
at Bankwest Stadium in Parramatta on Saturday, their confidence will be
up again.
“Confidence starts early in the week in the way you prepare, the way you put in extra, on and off the field and how you prepare yourself for the weekend. I know we will do all of that in the week and be ready for the first match,” he said.
• The Blitzboks’ current run of three successive defeats is their worst
ever, but history is on their side when it comes to matches against
Argentina, Samoa and France, their Pool B opponents in Sydney. South
Africa won 45 out of 61 matches against Argentina with an average score
of 22-10; 52 out of 58 against France (24-9); and 52 out of 79 over
Samoa (19-13).
Play online games for free at games.easybranches.com
Guest Post Services www.easybranches.com/contribute