A last minute penalty by Danco Burger gave the Namibian Welwitschias a rather fortunate 22-19 victory against Uganda at Walvis Bay on Saturday.
The Welwitschias outscored the Ugandan Cranes by three tries to one, but the home side made numerous mistakes, which Uganda used to good advantage, keeping the scoreboard ticking with regular penalties.
Namibia opened the scoring within 10 minutes when flyhalf Danco Burger crashed over for an unconverted try, but Ugandan flyhalf Yasin Wasswa reduced the gap to 5-3 with his first penalty midway through the first half.
Another Burger try, converted by Godwin Silvanus, put Namibia 12-3 ahead, but another Wasswa penalty reduced the gap to 12-6 early in the second half.
Uganda took the lead for the first time when replacement flanker Brian Wandera went over for a try converted by substitute flyhalf Liam Walker, and they stretched their lead to 16-12 when Walker added a penalty shortly after.
Namibia, however, launched attack after attack, with eighthman Adriaan Booysen, lock Oliver Kurz, and the wings Jurgen Meyer and Quirione Majiedt prominent, and finally regained the lead at 19-16 when hooker Armand Combrinck went over for a converted try from a driving maul.
Another Walker penalty tied the score at 19-19 before Burger completed a fine performance with his 80th minute penalty for a personal haul of 15 points.
After the match, Burger, however, said they need to improve their performance if they hope to win the Africa Cup.
“We won’t be able to win the Africa Cup with a performance like this so we will make sure that we are better prepared for the Pumas next weekend. We had a very good start, we wanted a quick start and we got that, but we made too many unnecessary mistakes, we played against ourselves, and Uganda got their tails up and started coming for us. And that’s exactly what will happen at the Africa Cup; if you make a few mistakes you will get points against you,” he said.
“We had some good moments, but our execution wasn’t where we wanted it to be, but it’s a good start, now we know where we are at and we can just build from here on. Like I said, our tight facets were not up to scratch, we lost one or two lineouts, and we got a bit of an uphill battle in the scrums, so we will definitely work on that on Monday again.”
Regarding his winning kick at the end, Burger said he trusted his experience.
“There is always pressure, but I just told myself I’ve been under this type of pressure before. I just placed the ball and told myself to stay calm and to stay low, so then I kicked the ball and just trusted that it would go over, and it did,” he said.
Uganda captain Byron Oketayot said they are improving.
“First of all, let me congratulate the Namibian rugby team on the win and for giving us this contest. We are trying to put things together and the results show that we are almost there. We haven’t polished everything yet but we are almost there. Going back home, we will review the video of the match and see where we went wrong.
“We came as the underdogs, but it was a good performance and a good contest for us which is a plus. It was a tough contest, but we expected the physicality and we also brought the physicality to the game.
“At the end of the day, we fell short by three points, but it was a good performance by the boys and now we will just go back, review the video, see where we went wrong and then polish that up as we get ready for the World Cup qualifiers,” he said.
