Cape Town — The Blitzboks suffered a 21-19 defeat in the fifth-place semi-finals at the hands of Australia at the France Sevens tournament in Toulouse on Sunday, ending outside the top five of a tournament yet again.
After being knocked out of the Cup contention in the quarter-finals on Saturday by Argentina (21-12), the Springbok Sevens had to finish at least fifth, and above Australia, to keep their hopes alive of qualifying automatically for the Olympic Games next year in Paris.
But instead, the Aussie Sevens ended fifth in France and extended their lead over the South Africans on the overall series log.
There's still a chance for the Blitzboks to leapfrog Australia, but they'll have to win the final tournament in London this coming weekend and hope that Australia hit a big speed bump in their pool and do not progress to the knockout stage.
But the way things ended for the Blitzboks in Toulouse, it looks like automatic qualification for next year's Games will be a bridge too far.
They struggled to put together consistent performances all weekend, and a high error-rate cost them against Australia in their final match.
It was an arm wrestle as the lead changed hands a couple of times before Australia scored a beautiful try off their own kick-off to seal the win.
Usually the Blitzboks are good at fielding high balls off a kick-off, but this time around they failed and the Aussies collected the loose ball to score what proved to be the winning try.
A late James Murphy try after sustained pressure gave South Africa hope of pulling off a comeback win but it was dashed when they lost the ball close to the try line.
It was a good return for playmakers Justin Geduld, Ronald Brown and Shaun Williams, but you could see the team hadn't played together for a while.
Coach Sandile Ngcobo will hope for an improved performance from his side in the final tournament in England.
The incentive is massive and the equation is simple for South Africa: win the London tournament and their hopes of qualifying automatically for the Olympics will stay alive. Lose and end below Australia and automatic qualification is out the door.
IOL Sport