The Namibian Welwitschias embark on a new chapter when they take on Zambia in an international rugby friendly at the Hage Geingob Rugby Stadium on Sunday.
It will be Namibia’s first international match of the year and also their first since they missed out on qualifying for the 2027 Rugby World Cup at last year’s qualifiers in Dubai.
That meant that Namibia missed out on the world cup for the first time since 1999, with the result that they are now starting over and looking further ahead to qualifying for the 2031 World Cup.
The Namibia Rugby Union roped in the services of former Kenya and Western Province coach Jerome Paarwater and along with local coaching assistants, a mostly local-based squad has been preparing for the Zambia match as well as an encounter against the Blue Bulls on 11 July.
Darryl de la Harpe, the Welwitschias’ backline and defence coach said their preparations are on track.
“The preparations have gone well, regarding player depth and seeing all the players from all the clubs, while other players from outside Windhoek also came in this week.
“The players got to meet Jerome and see how he runs things so I think with what we want to achieve regarding player depth, and giving the youth exposure, I think we covered that, but Sunday will be a different challenge,” he said.
A large squad has been preparing for the match and De La Harpe said they will try to give up to 40 players a run on Sunday.
“We wanted to use 25 players because Zambia will also bring 25, but Jerome felt that we should try and give 40 players a run. Obviously, we’ll start with a strong team to give a good account of ourselves. We want to see some of the players, maybe just for five or ten minutes because its vital to let them know that we have a wide canvas approach, to give all the players a shot, and there’s also the Bulls game coming up and the Victoria Cup in Zimbabwe in October,” he said.
De La Harpe said they will mostly use local based players although a few professional players abroad have returned and will be available.
“We will mostly use local players, but Prince !Gaoseb and Max Katjijeko returned to Namibia after their seasons finished and they said they want to be involved, so we are going to use them. Adriaan Booysen is also back and then there are a couple of South African-based players as well. There’s a lot of youngsters in the squad but I think they are good enough, they just need to be exposed to a higher level,” he said.
De La Harpe said they expect a strong challenge from Zambia.
“They recently played two games against Zimbabwe last month and did quite well, losing 43-31 and 17-7. They’re a very physical side and I think most of them work for the army, so they play together as a unit. They are big and physical and although they are tactically they are not there yet, they gave Zimbabwe a real good shot,” he said.
De La Harpe said that although he was disappointed about missing out on the world cup, he is excited about the future.
“Obviously its bad and it hurts not to be at the world cup again, and having been involved at the world cup, I know what we are missing out on, but if you look at the amount of quality players we still have, I feel we have a very good team. We have players who are still under 25 which means that means they will be available for the next world cup qualifiers in two years time.
“So I honestly believe our players are good enough, even the local based players, and we have some very promising youngsters coming through. There are good loose forwards and props – we used to struggle with props, but now we have up to eight props who are good enough – they’ve got the size, so now it’s our job to develop them and give them the right platform,” he said.
