West Indies came away from the Argentina Sevens with a measure of credibility after reaching their second Bowl semi-final in as many attempts.

What Saturday's resounding 33-12 victory over Paraguay did was create a dividing line in this form of the game between West Indies and the upstarts of South American rugby, including Brazil, Uruguay and Chile.

But catching France, United States and Canada, 24-0 conquerors of the Caribbean side, will take some doing.

"It will take the West Indies one to two years to get up to that next level," Neil Brooks, the West Indies manager, said from Mar Del Plata yesterday.

"Over the two weeks, certainly myself and Mark Hewitt as coach were very encouraged. What we did was all that we could ask for. On both days, we put in a good performance . we competed. "Coming in here as the bottom-ranked seed, we've come away with being in the tier above, which is at worst number 12."

West Indies ran in five tries with Josh McGavern, one of four Bermuda players in the squad, kicking four conversions. Kurt Johnson, of Jamaica, and Trinidad wing Mark Hamilton had two tries apiece and Danny McGavern, also of Bermuda, ran in the other.

But it was a day of disappointment for both Bermuda's Bobby Hurdle, the captain, and Geoff Gregory, the team's leading try-scorer, as they failed fitness tests and sat out the final day.

"Not having those two impacted us in both games," Brooks said. "The others had to step up and carried it through."

The manager believes that West Indies will head into the Hong Kong leg of the iRB World Sevens Series, from March 22 to 24, with renewed confidence and a team strong enough to challenge for the Bowl.

He said: "West Indies have the players and the calibre to make breaks and play some good rugby. But unfortunately we still lack a bit of strength in depth in terms of some of the players coming on to cover and as substitutes. We're pretty much certain that we have an invite to Hong Kong and we're more or less looking to take the same squad. With two to three players that we've brought on in the last minute, we should have a very good team."

In the main event, Fiji overcame the controversy that marred their performances in Santiago to score a 24-7 win over South Africa in the Cup final. The Fijians had upset New Zealand, winners of the previous two tournaments, 5-0 in the semi-finals while the Springboks downed Argentina 17-7.