Africa-Press – Namibia. THE Windhoek Draught Welwitschias make their home debut in the Mzansi Challenge tomorrow when they host the South Western Districts (SWD) Eagles at the Hage Geingob Stadium.
The Welwitschias were unfortunate to lose their opening match 26-21 to the Border Bulldogs in East London last weekend, when they overturned an 18-7 deficit in the first half to draw level at 21-all, before the Bulldogs scored a late winning try.
The Welwitschias struggled up front and were overpowered in the set-pieces, but they showed some attacking enterprise and managed to run in three tries through centre Danko Burger, scrumhalf Jacques Theron and wing Lloyd Jacobs, while flyhalf Andre van der Berg added three conversions.
The SWD Eagles, who beat Eastern Province 36-23 in Riversdale last weekend, will, however, be a much tougher proposition and Welwitschias’ forwards coach Allister Coetzee earlier this week called for patience.
“We all want results, but it’s not going to happen now, it’s going to take a while to gel this team, but it will come. This team is growing, they are starting to improve their game understanding, working in the system and their skill-sets under pressure, but we are playing against teams that have been in the Mzansi Challenge for two or three seasons now, so that’s the difference. But I’m really positive about the growth and the results are a by-product of the process that we are busy with,” he said.
“Against Border, we didn’t control the controllables well, we should have been better at certain things and we could have won the game. We battled at the set-pieces, our scrummaging, our line-outs and maul-stopping, and it forced us into conceding a lot of penalties. We conceded 19 penalties in total and our target is less than 10, so it’s difficult to win if you are not holding your own in the set-pieces,” he said.
Furthermore, the Namibian team has suffered numerous injuries, especially in the front row, said Coetzee.
“We are currently sitting with a prop crisis where we had five props who became unavailable in the space of one and a half weeks. Jano Otto has retired, Nelius Theron injured his groin, Andre Rademeyer pulled a muscle,
Desiderius Sethie injured his knee, and we brought in a club player from United Johan Brockmann, but he also got injured, so where else do we get props in Namibia,” he said, adding that they now had to look further afield to sign a prop.
Coetzee said their injury crisis forced them to look to South Africa for reinforcements.
“It happened in the past where we don’t have depth in a particular position, we can go and look somewhere else, so we did that and signed a player, Pieter Jansen, who’s a hooker from South Africa. Our coaches have done the rounds all over Namibia to look for hookers and that’s another position where we still lack depth to be able to compete in the first class division. We are also looking for another prop from outside to join and to help alleviate the crisis that we are in,” he said.
Coetzee said despite being under pressure, the Welwitschias will rise to the challenge.
“We are playing a tougher team this weekend in the SWD Eagles, but we are playing at home so you will see a good effort out there, we are hoping to improve on those little mistakes of last weekend, and put up a good performance.”
The match kicks off at 16h00, while tickets can be bought at the entrance.
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