The big favorite of the African qualifying tournament, Namibia logically qualified for the 2023 World Cup, where it will find New Zealand and France in particular in the pools, beating Kenya in the final (36-0), Sunday in Aix- in Provence.
Namibia has already participated in the last six editions of the World Cup (1999, 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015 and 2019) and this new qualification confirms its status as the second African nation behind its neighbor South Africa.
To discover
The 2023 World Cup schedule
At the 2023 World Cup (September 8 - October 21), the Namibian "
Welwitschias
", ranked 24th in the world and trained since last year by South African Allister Coetzee, will be placed in Pool A. There they will face New Zealand, triple world champion, France, host country, Italy and Uruguay.
“
It's a great honour, we are very happy to go to the World Cup.
We have worked hard to earn this right.
We made a few mistakes at the start, but we stuck to our game plan and it worked out well
,” defender Divan Rossouw explained after the match.
“
We knew that Kenya was always tough to play.
It was a good match and we gave it our all.
What an honor to go to the World Cup!
“, for his part, rejoiced the center and captain Johan Deysel.
After having clearly dominated Burkina Faso (71-5) in the quarter-finals then Zimbabwe with a little more difficulty in the semi-finals (34-19), Namibia very logically dominated Kenya on Sunday in Aix-en-Provence.
Infinitely more complete, the men of Allister Coetzee, former coach of the Springboks, scored four tries, the first three by third row Wian Conradie and the last by Johan Deysel.
They added four penalties.
Without a solution, Kenya has not even managed to save honour.
However, the Kenyan "
Simbas
" have one last chance to qualify for the World Cup, via a repechage tournament in November bringing together three other teams: Portugal, as well as the unfortunate finalists of the "
Americas 2
" play-off (Chile or United States). States) and the Asia/Pacific dam (Tonga or Hong Kong).
Before the final between Namibia and Kenya, Algeria had brilliantly concluded its beautiful qualifying tournament by beating Zimbabwe 20-12 in the match for third place.