With less than two days to go before the Namibia Under 19 Rugby team have to leave for the Confederations of African Rugby (CAR) African Qualifying tournament in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, the Namibia Rugby Unions (NRU) still does not have enough funding for the team.
NRU President, Buks Bok was still not sure where they would get the money on Tuesday morning.
“There is no money for the trip, we are still running around trying to fight the fire. If we don’t manage to get the money by Thursday morning then the probability is that the team will not go to the tournament,” Bock said.
“The initial budget for the trip was for N$700 000, but we have now managed to trim it down to about N$400 000. For instance we did not get a new kit for the players. We also received N$175 000 from CAR,” Bock added.
“At the moment we have no idea where we are going to get the money and we are still running around looking for the money. In the past, we as individuals put some money together to enable our teams to participate in tournaments,” he added.
“If we don’t manage to go to Ivory Coast then we will miss out on qualifying for the IRB Under 20 World Championships. We would be out of international competitions for a while and nobody in Namibia seems to care,” he said.
“When the senior national team went to the Nations Cup, they did not have any sponsorship and we had to use our own money to get the team to Romania. They came back with the trophy and everyone was happy.”
Meanwhile, the coach of the Under 19 team, Henk Botha, was very positive about his team’s chances if they do manage to go to the tournament.
“We started training yesterday (Monday) and everything seems to be in order. We are ready to go and get the African Trophy. We are very positive that we will bring it back,” Botha said.
“We are ranked second in the tournament and our first game will be against Zambia, and we believe that they will be one of the easier countries to beat,” he added.
“If we beat Zambia then we play either Morocco or Tunisia, who we do not know much about, but we are positive that we will reach the final,” Botha continued.
Some of the star players in the Namibian team are flyhalf Zirk Coetzee who is at the Western Province Rugby Academy, lock Munee Tjieuza from Western Suburbs, Rehoboth wing Chase Diergaardt and eighthman Royal Otto from Tsumeb Gymnasium.
The team is scheduled to leave Namibia on Thursday July 22 and play their first match against Zambia on Saturday, July 24. If they win they will play either Morocco or Tunisia on Tuesday, July 27 and the final will be on Saturday July 31.
The other countries participating are Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda and the Ivory Coast.
The Namibian squad is as follows:
Rathony Becker, Lu-Andre Benade, Daniel Bock, Zirk Coetzee, Nico de Jager, Chase Diergaardt, Gordon Goaseb, William Jacobs, Pieter Janse van Vuuren, Nandivatu Karuuombe, Jurie Loots, Glen Mouton, Frank Mova, Stefan Neustadt, Royal Otto, Desiderius Sethie, Johan Steenkamp, Jeremy Strong, Tjino Tjirare, Munee Tjiueza, Daniel van Vuuren, Andre van Zyl, Ruchan Visagie and Jaco Wiese.
Shortlist: Stef Botha, Karl-Heinz Giersch, Russlyn Kahingunga, Wolfgang Kohl, Juan Lewis, Meyer Moolman, Aurelio Plato and Francis Pretorius.