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Namibians proud underdogs at rugby World Cup
TOULOUSE, France -- When the rugby World Cup is over, Schalk van der Merwe plans to return home to his family's 10,000-hectare farm near the Botswana border and disappear for a while.
"When I'm back on the farm, I'd like to just go away for three or four days to the bush and stay there without people," the Namibian inside centre said Tuesday, his distaste for the hustle and bustle of city life almost palpable. "Be myself again.
"At home you can be what you like to be. Here you have to be friendly ever day."
If van der Merwe, 23, doesn't feel friendly at home at Gobabis, he can always match snarls with the 17 lions and assorted leopards, cheetahs and 40 baboons at the family's sanctuary for wild animals.
Or haul donkey and horse meat at feeding time.
Wild animals don't faze him, so tackling the Canadian rugby team shouldn't be a problem Thursday.
Lions are easier to read than people, it appears.
"They usually show something before they do something," the boyish Namibian said. "They pull down their ears."
"It's like you grow up with a dog, they're like family to me," he added.
Prop Gerhard (Joodt) Opperman will return to the diamond mining town of Oranjemund on the South African border where he is a security officer for DeBoers.
Opperman, a 31-year-old former bodybuilder shaped like a refrigerator, once caught a smuggler, saving his employer a small fortune while consigning the criminal to four years in jail.
Fly half Christian Zaayman, 26, will head home to the Namibian capital of Windhoek, where he is a collections officer for a local bank.
By then the scar from the stitches over his right eye, courtesy of a Fijian, should have faded slightly.
Tiny scrum half Riaan Jantjies, who makes Theo Fleury look like a power forward, will go back to his job as a beer rep.
Just five feet and 145 pounds, Jantjies looks like a child as he darts around hulking forwards.
If they catch him, he's in trouble, however. The scrum half was almost decapitated when a French player accidentally clotheslined him in a tackle.
On Thursday, all three will be in the Nambian lineup in a game that will decide whether the Canadians advance to a quarter-final playoff. Both teams are 0-2, having lost to France and Fiji.
The Desert Warriors, the nickname the Namibians have adopted, are actually farmers, salesmen, beer reps and railway, beverage and dried goods employees.
Several are unemployed, axed by companies who weren't willing to share their people with the national rugby team.
Not one is a professional player. Captain Quinn Hough, a farmer, drives 400 kilometres round trip for week-long training sessions in the capital.
He gets about $6 for a practice and $25 for a match.
The Namibian rugby union has no funds so the players raised some $37,000 to divide among the squad as a per diem.
"Even as we stand here today, the guys are struggling to survive with the little bucks available," said team manager Walter Don. "But it shows their commitment. They love to play for their country and it's an honour for us to market Namibia internationally."
"The guys came here to prove to the world that we can play rugby," he added.
It's a lonely job. Wives and girlfriends couldn't afford the trip. The team's media liasion doubles as an assistant coach. The squad goes out once a week for a meal outside their hotel, usually looking for a juicy steak.
Professional sides may have forgone rounds of beer and rugby songs for Creatine and sports psychologists but "we still do it," Zaayman admitted with a laugh.
The local lager is named Windhoek, after the capital.
"It's good stuff,"' he said, adding somewhat sadly, "We haven't seen it here. We've been looking."
While the Namibian uniforms have been provided by Canterbury, the team is short on other sponsors although Mizuno gave the players a deal on their footware.
Their African homeland is sport crazy, although rugby ranks second to soccer.
There are only 550 senior rugby players and 17 clubs in Namibia, a country of 1.6 million that made it to the World Cup after a bitter dispute over racial parity threatened to derail the team.
There are nine black players on the 30-man squad, a team selected solely on merit according to Don.
Before independance from South Africa in 1990, almost all blacks and whites played on separate teams.
Don says times have changed.
"This is the new breed of the Namibian nation," he said pointing to the players as they practised. "You can see there is real reconciliation within the group."
The Namibians have been embraced by French fans as the underdog in Pool C. They were hammered 67-18 by Fiji in their opening game, but matched the Fijians in the second half.
Against France, they earned cheers for their gutsy play and left plenty of French bodies littered on the pitch before succumbing 47-13.
Still it's no picnic.
"Rugby at the World Cup is not actually fun, it's more stress than fun at the moment," acknowledged van der Merwe.
Rated 18th in the unofficial world rankings, Namibia's finest rugby moment came in 1991 when it defeated Ireland twice. More recently, however, the team was beaten by Harlequins, an English club side.
Still the Desert Warriors represent their country with great pride. Opperman's wife Roleen and two daughters cry every time they see him on television singing Namibia Land of the Brave, his hand clutching a fistful of jersey with its fish eagle emblem.
Opperman, who also has a two-month-old baby boy, has seen his family for only six weeks this year because he was transferred to Windhoek to facilitate rugby training.
While others are on unpaid leave, he gets a partial salary while on tour.
"I think DeBoers can afford it," he said.
Back in Oranjemund, the more than 3,000 workers live in a diamond town where the gates close every night at 10 p.m.
Should Nambia beat Canada on Thursday, the party may still be going strong when they throw open the doors at 6 a.m.
"I can assure you it will be like unofficially winning the World Cup," said Don.
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