While some of us are still wiping the sleep out of our eyes today, the Blitzboks will be strutting their stuff in the Dubai heat.
Kicking off the new Sevens Series at 7.32am against Ireland, coach Neil Powell’s defending champions know they have to hit the road running this term.
Powell says: “It’s a long season and we are starting off with a tough game against Ireland, who is a very structured team, so it will be important to start well.
“We’ve done proper analysis on them to make sure we know what we up against. If we don’t do well in terms of our effort and [the] implementation of our roles on the field, then we could find ourselves in trouble.”
South Africa faced Japan at 11.24am in Pool C, before finishing off their round robin matches against Great Britain at 2.20pm.
Blitzboks squad: Christie Grobbelaar, 2 Ryan Oosthuizen, 3 Impi Visser, 4 Zain Davids, 5 Tiaan Pretorius, 6 JC Pretorius, 7 Branco du Preez, 8 Selvyn Davids, 9 Shaun Williams, 10 Ronald Brown, 11 Siviwe Soyizwapi (captain), 12 Muller du Plessis, 13 Shilton van Wyk.