South Africa lost their third successive Plate final and the second against Australia as they were beaten 26-22 in the Wellington leg of the IRB Sevens World Series on Saturday, after leading 17-0 five minutes into the game.

South Africa had the perfect start as Chase Minnaar scored their first try to go up 5-0 against Australia after less than a minute.

Mzwandile Stick made it 12-0 after four minutes when he waltzed through after a penalty and then Ryno Benjamin took advantage to simply fall on the ball when Australia made three handling errors under pressure with the ball going back into their in-goal-area from the kick-off (17-0).

In what was a very average game until then, Australia's James Stannard took advantage of sloppy defence to draw his team back to 17-7 at halftime.

Again it was poor defence that saw Australia break the line in the first minute after the break for Bernard Foley to run 60 metres and score under the posts (17-14 to the Boks). Another missed tackle saw Kimami Situati go over under the posts (19-17).

Then, again from sloppy play, Frankie Horn brought some structure and Mzwandile Stick scored a lovely individual try after kicking ahead. The conversion was missed (22-19 to the Boks).

The lack of speed of the Springboks was glaringly exposed as Benjamin was outrun in a race to the tryline for the Aussies to score the winner (26-22).

** Earlier South Africa went down (21-5) to Fiji for the third time in three quarterfinals in the Wellington tournament on Saturday.

South Sea Island teams Samoa and Fiji will contest the final after beating New Zealand (24-14 and England (28-19) respectively.

SUPERRUGBY