South Africa have won the 2019 Rugby Africa Women’s Sevens after a narrow 15-14 victory over Kenya in Monastir, Tunisia, Sunday.
Both teams have thus booked their spots at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and will also participate in a qualification tournament for the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series.
Tunisia and Madagascar, meanwhile, have qualified for the Olympic repechage tournament which comes up in June next year.
South Africa kicked off Sunday’s action, the second and final day of competition, with a 42-00 victory over Morocco following which Madagascar trounced Senegal 24-05.
Uganda suffered a 00-33 defeat to hosts Tunisia, Kenya beat Zimbabwe 36-05, Ghana triumphed 29-10 against Mauritius, while Zambia wrapped up the first round of the games with a 24-05 victory over Botswana.
In Sunday’s second round of fixtures, South Africa continued their winning run with a 29-00 win against Madagascar 29-00 in the first semi-final while host Tunisia were dumped out by Kenya after a 00-19 loss.
Madagascar went on to claim the third place after beating Tunisia 05-00. The final clash between South Africa and Kenya resulted in a victory for the South Africans by a small gap with the game ending 15-14.
Final Ranking of Rugby Africa Women’s Sevens 2019:
- South Africa
- Kenya
- Madagascar
- Tunisia
- Uganda
- Senegal
- Morocco
- Zimbabwe
- Ghana
- Zambia
- Botswana
- Mauritius
Reactions
Khaled Babbou (President, Rugby Africa)
“I was very happy with the tournament and the finals. I want to thank the organisers for doing a perfect job, to the Tunisian Rugby Federation for making huge efforts to ensure everything went well. The level of play is improving, the refereeing, and everything that has to do with the evolution of rugby is getting better. I hope we move to higher levels in the next edition. I ask all teams to prepare well, because we have seen many surprises in this tournament. Kenya for example, lost to South Africa by a very small margin. I hope that in the future, things will improve on every level, and I am confident they will.”
Felix Oloo (Head Coach, Kenya)
“It was an amazing experience. I am happy for the young girls who were able to express themselves. I’m quite impressed with the performance of my players. We really wanted to win this tournament, but things didn’t go our way. We knew they we ready for us since they knew how we were playing so we changed our structure and played heads up rugby. Things could have been better for us but I’m happy with my players nonetheless.”
Paul Delport (Head Coach, South Africa)
“I’m very proud of our ladies. In the beginning, we struggled to find our rhythm, but today they stepped up. Kudos to Kenya, they played really well, at times, I thought we kept them in the game, but I guess that’s the game of sevens. People want to see an entertaining match and both teams delivered that. The tournament was fantastic, this is our first time in Tunisia, it’s a wonderful place and the people are very friendly. The organisation was very well put together so we were really happy to be here.”
