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Double defending Adelaide Sevens champions South Africa are determined to put their difficult preperations behind them ahead of Friday's kick-off.

The Boks lost stand-in captain Mzwandile Stick last week due to a knee injury with regular captain Paul Delport, seriously injuring his serious ankle injury in December.

Treu has made two changes from the side that won the Plate in Las Vegas on the IRB Sevens World Series.

Furthermore, Treu only departed for Australia, for the fifth leg of the IRB Sevens World Series, on Wednesday after staying behind in Cape Town to be with his mother, who is ill in hospital. New Skills Coach Jason Stanton, an Australian Touch Rugby specialist, has taken over in his absence.

 “Its been a difficult week with me staying behind and the team also had a very long and arduous journey over to Australia. But the rest of the team management and the senior players know what to do and took control this week, while I remained in constant contact with them,” said Treu.

“We’ve brought in a lot of new faces this season with a reason – we need to start building for the future and are now also looking at the Commonwealth Games and the Dubai and George tournaments in December.

“That is not to say we’re taking our title defence in Adelaide lightly. We’ll be going all out to win that tournament again, but we’ll be taking it game for game.”

The Springbok Sevens team played in warm-up game against Wales earlier today and according to Treu it went well.

“The key now is to get the players refreshed before the tournament starts on Friday. We need to build on the momentum we got by beating England and Fiji in the plate in Las Vegas,” said the Sevens coach.

The Adelaide tournament, which was won by South Africa in 2008 and 2009, kicks off on Friday, 19 March and runs until Sunday, 21 March. The Springbok Sevens are in Pool B with Samoa, recent winners in Las Vegas, as well as France and Japan.

A week later, from 26 to 28 March, the IRB Sevens World Series moves to popular Hong Kong, where Treu’s team will be aiming for their first-ever cup victory. South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Korea are in Pool F.

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