heading to the French capital next month.<\/a><\/p>\nRugby World Cup winner Habana was part of the South Africa sevens set-up before the sport made its debut at the 2016 Olympics, but did not make the final squad which took bronze in Rio de Janeiro.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s been a strange old season for the Blitzboks,\u201d Habana, 41, told BBC Sport Africa.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s been a change of management, and it’s always difficult in any transition period to try and keep the consistency of success.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they play to the best of their abilities, given the talent, skill, leadership and coaching that we have within that group, they’re more than capable enough to qualify for the Olympics.\u201d<\/p>\n
South Africa\u2019s men were among the most consistent performers on the world sevens circuit, with three titles and six second-placed finishes between 2012-13 and 2021-22.<\/p>\n
Yet the departure of long-serving coach Neil Powell at the end of 2022 led to a drop-off in results.<\/p>\n
Philip Snyman replaced Sandile Ngcobo as coach in March, and the Blitzboks ended the SVNS tour in seventh place for the second successive season \u2013 with their sole series win in the most recent campaign coming in Dubai last December.<\/p>\n
\u201cNeil Powell laid an incredible foundation with his team for the better part of 10-12 years,\u201d Habana said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think when you lose someone like that, if you really just look at Manchester United and what’s happened post Alex Ferguson, it’s really difficult to make sure that that transition is as good as possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of the players who were instrumental in winning Commonwealth gold have since moved on into the 15s format of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bryan Habana says South Africa must return to their core principles in order to qualify for the men\u2019s rugby sevens tournament at this year\u2019s Olympic Games. Kenya beat the Blitzboks to a spot in Paris in African qualifying, but the reigning Commonwealth champions have another chance to book their place via a 12-team tournament in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18933,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[21,18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18932"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18932"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18934,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18932\/revisions\/18934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}