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The Namibia verdict on Deysel ban, latest World Cup red card
By Liam Heagney
Namibia boss Allister Coetzee has given his verdict on the five-game ban handed down to Johan Deysel, their Rugby World Cup skipper who was last week red-carded after colliding with the head of Antoine Dupont.
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The French star suffered a cheekbone fracture in the incident in Marseille last Thursday night and he was operated on the following day in the hope of making it back fit to play in the latter stages of the tournament for his country.
In the meantime, Namibia completed their France 2023 campaign on Wednesday in Lyon and following a 26-36 loss to Uruguay, head coach Coetzee shared his thoughts on the length of suspension that Deysel received, a five-match ban reducible to four if tackle school is successfully completed.
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He also spoke about the red card his team suffered in the second half against the Uruguayans, sub loosehead Desiderius Sethie getting sent off after a foul play review of his 58th-minute yellow card.
“The first one was pure unlucky, our captain, he was really unlucky with the first one,” reckoned Coetzee. “The second one was just poor technique, he [Sethie] was just upright.
"They had to a minor cut operation on it…"
– The strange Rugby World Cup story of the alleged spider bite that ruled forward Johan Retief out of Wednesday's Namibia match versus Uruguay in Lyon. #URUvNAM #RWC2023 pic.twitter.com/78hgQ86Rqi
— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) September 27, 2023
“We work hard on a level change when it comes to one-on-one tackling because of the head clash situation and what it is, so we put him in a bad position and that’s the effect of that.”
Asked specifically about the Deysel ban, Coetzee added: “I suppose it was a fair sanction. It was a head clash and that was the punishment. “They went for high-end (entry point) but eventually it is a four-week ban if you scale it down to the one week that he missed this week, one more week for the community service in the form of a coaching clinic and it is effectively four weeks. I’d say it’s a fair ban.”
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The loss to Uruguay meant has completed their seventh pool campaign still without a historic first win at the finals. They were ahead of Uruguay for 54 minutes of their Pool A match, but an excessive second-half penalty count proved too much of a burden.
Looking ahead to the future, Coetzee said: “We need to blood young players. There should be a programme with a timeline, with U21 players coming through. Out there tonight, there is just the matter also of not enough competition and caps against tier-one nations and other top nations.
“The second thing is conditioning. When you get your players in World Cup year, when you get your players in camp, they should be conditioned. They should be conditioned like any other professional athlete.”
