South Africa captain Mzwandile Stick has his fingers crossed that their Plate success at the USA Sevens earlier this month will spark the IRB Sevens World Series title defence into live and result in a third successive crown in Adelaide. Standing in as captain for the injured Paul Delport, Stick has seen South Africa beaten in the Cup quarter finals of all four legs of the 2009/10 Series to date, three times at the hands of Fiji and once to New Zealand.The Plate success in Las Vegas, which came after confidence-boosting victories over England and Fiji, was South Africa's best result of the season but still leaves them 48 points behind Series leaders New Zealand in the overall standings. "As a team we're obviously not pleased with seventh place on the log and our overall performance so far," admitted Stick. "However, we are working very hard to eliminate those marginal errors and hopefully our Plate victory in Las Vegas will kick-start a better run of results for us."
Stick acknowledges that the loss of several key players who helped secure a first overall Series title has not helped their cause with injury or elevation to the Super 14 ranks having robbed coach Paul Treu of the likes of Robert Ebersohn, Gio Aplon and Renfred Dazel among others.
