Namibia maintains perfect starts

The Namibia under 20 Rugby team continued to set the pace following day two of the World Rugby U/20 2018 Trophy in Bucharest.
Namibia laid down another marker with a 84- 10 defeat of Hong Kong and put themselves within 80 minutes of the final with only Samoa in their way and got the 55-26 victory over Romania they needed to keep pace at the top of the group despite an ill-disciplined performance that earned them two yellows and one red card. Namibia will play Samoa on Wednesday afternoon in a winner-takes-all encounter for Pool A spoils.

Namibia accelerated away from Hong Kong in the final quarter, scoring seven tries from the 60th minute onwards to put the seal on a second successive victory in Pool A. Having racked up a half-century of points against hosts Romania, the South African side picked up where they left off at the Stadionul National Arcul De Triumf on Saturday.

Impressive Namibia fly-half Denzo Bruwer missed a long-range penalty attempt, from inches inside his own half, in the third minute, but his side took the lead when Donaville Lebereki crossed eight minutes later. A successful Bruwer penalty stretched Namibia’s lead to 10 points before an unconverted James Rivers try gave Hong Kong hope. Bruwer struck his second penalty before Gerswin Mouton grabbed two tries in four minutes – the second a wonderful solo effort – to edge Namibia’s advantage beyond three converted scores.

Callum Tam profited from a strong Hong Kong scrum to score his side’s second try three minutes before half-time, but from then on it was all one-way traffic. Adriaan Ludick powered over to score shortly after the break, and 10 minutes later, with Namibia defending on their own line, Delron Brandt snagged an intercept before offloading for Elmarco Beukes to score.
Namibia scrum-half Jacques Theron ran back a 22 drop out almost unopposed on the hour mark to stretch his side’s lead to 36 points, but when Gerbus van Wyk was shown a yellow card five minutes later Hong Kong would have been forgiven for thinking there would have been a let up.
However, in the 10 minutes the back-row sat out his side ran in four tries. First, Mouton completed his hat-trick with a length of the field intercept, before Gilad Plaatjies, Gerhard Opperman and Pretorius all carved holes in an increasingly weary Hong Kong rearguard. Van Wyk returned for the final four minutes and there was still time for Daryl Wellman and Wynand Breytenbach to both breach the goal-line.