“THE DREAM IS TO WIN A GAME. THAT WOULD BE ECSTASY”
PLAYED 19, lost 19. Namibia’s World Cup record makes bleak reading but delve into the detail and a brighter picture emerges of Japan 2019’s lowliest team. Perhaps not blazing sunshine but wispier clouds than the dark skies that marked their World Cup nadir 16 years ago, when they sent the Adelaide Oval scoreboard spinning by succumbing 142-0 to Australia.
Phil Davies was preparing to take Leeds Tykes into their first Heineken Cup at the time of that chastening campaign Down Under. Today, he has swapped West Yorkshire for Windhoek, rainswept moors for arid savannahs, and is plotting similar against-the-odds heroics on the game’s grandest stage.
As head coach of Namibia, a title he assumed on the brink of England 2015 after a shock resignation left him holding the baby, Davies is tasked with building on the country’s best World Cup four years ago and – say it quietly
