The idea of complacency setting into the South Africa men’s camp in Valladolid this weekend (29-31 May) ahead of the second of the three HSBC SVNS World Championship stops makes Ryan Oosthuizen smile.
The Blitzboks may have won the opener in Hong Kong in fine style and already banked the 2025/26 HSBC SVNS league title, but this squad is driven by something deeper than simple success. They are desperate not to let a nation down.
“They are the guiding light and you don’t want to be the weaklings,” forward Oosthuizen said of the Springboks, his double Rugby World Cup-winning compatriots. “We want to stand on our own and we want them to also look at us as guiding lights, you know. We want them to be proud of us and to support us.”
Taking away people’s souls
This kind of motivation is priceless, Oosthuizen attests when discussing a training regime that has now delivered four HSBC SVNS tournament wins in-a-row and five of the past six.
“Training is much harder than actual games,” the 1.89m forward revealed. “We definitely train way harder than the games are.
“You’ll always notice that at the end of the second half – that’s when we look the freshest and that’s when we push away from other teams. Once it gets dark, that’s when we get comfortable and we can take away people’s souls.
“Say Fiji, you stop their off-loading game or New Zealand, you bully them back or Kenya, you match them physically. So, you kind of rip their soul out and then they are basically left with nothing.”
Playing with total freedom
Next up in the list of ingredients driving South Africa’s domination is a style of play the squad buys into without hesitation, along with a level of internal competition that leaves even season-long star performers like Oosthuizen looking over their shoulders.
“We’ve got the idea that we want to create a ‘Blitzbok style’. We want total freedom on the field and we want to dominate defensively,” the 30-year-old said.
“It comes back to Coach Philip [Snyman, South Africa head coach] he basically calls it playing outside your box, but still inside the bigger system. Like, we are not an offloading team. You'll never catch us throwing loose offloads because that would be outside the box and outside the system.
“You look at guys like Selvyn Davids, Shilton Van Wyk and Tristan Leyds and it seems almost like they are playing touch. We give them the ball and they do their thing, and we just adapt.
“That’s what we want, we want our playmakers to create magic. We set that foundation for them, doing the hard work and the grafting to keep them fresh. And then once they get the ball, they can create magic by just playing with total freedom.”
Coach Snyman said in December 2025 that creating strength in depth was a key aim this season, and Oosthuizen has seen that impact first-hand.
“You can’t be stagnant in your form because if you’re not playing well someone else is going to take your opportunity,” he said. “It’s perfect, it creates competitive excellence.”
Ready to be the best in the world
For the team, it has meant regular-season tournament wins in Cape Town, Perth, Vancouver and New York, followed by Hong Kong in the HSBC SVNS World Championship opener.
The mecca of sevens rugby was a place South Africa had famously never won in 50 long years. But Snyman’s side put that right in style, stomping to a 35-7 victory over last season’s league champions Argentina in the final, in front of 41,000-plus fans.
For Oosthuizen himself it has meant 52 carries, 565m-plus made, 17 defenders beaten and 10 tries scored – including in the semi-final and final in Hong Kong. Not bad for a player who not long ago had thought he would have retired by now.
“I’ve got a very good relationship with Coach Philip, he knows me, knows the kind of person I am,” Oosthuizen, who has recently signed a one-year contract extension, said. “I feel like I have freedom to be myself. In the past I always felt restricted, like I couldn’t express myself.”
Some more tries from Oosthuizen and a couple more tournament wins will see the Blitzboks secure the World Championship title to go with their league crown. Quite an achievement for a side that started the season ‘targeting semi-finals’.
Not, of course, that they are getting carried away.
“Three years ago we were down in the dumps, I know how it feels to be seventh or eighth in the world,” Oosthuizen said.
“Now I know how it feels to be the best in the world and it’s always better to be the best in the world.”