Cam Roigard gets off to dream start in All Blacks’ demolition of Namibia

Death, taxes and Namibia being thrashed by the All Blacks. Namibia have now played 24 World Cup games, and lost every one of them. They are a proud team, amateurs in the large part, working on a shoestring budget and desperate for their first victory. Battered 52-8 by Italy in the first round, now 71-3 by New Zealand, they have to play France next, for goodness sake, before they get to their last game, and the one they’re really targeting: Uruguay. You wonder what sort of shape they are going to be in by that stage.

A handful of these Namibian players, including their captain, Johan Deysel, have now played in three World Cups, and been pitched against the All Blacks in every one of them. It must have seemed like a privilege to share the pitch with them the first time around, but the appeal must be starting to wear a little thin. They have conceded 30 tries against them in three Tests, and scored one themselves.

As for the All Blacks, it was a slick performance, and means they’ve gathered a little momentum as they roll on into their next game against Italy, but otherwise, won’t have learned too much from this turkey shoot. They will be annoyed, too, that it has cost them Ethan de Groot, who was given a red card for a reckless tackle.

As a going contest, it lasted eight minutes. By then New Zealand were 12-0 up, through two tries from their 22-year-old scrum-half Cam Roigard, who was making his first start. The first came at the end of a fine, free-flowing attack, sparked by Beauden Barrett’s dainty crossfield kick to Leicester Fainga’anuku. He slipped the ball on to David Havili, who came looping around on the outside. Fainga’anuku, who is a force of nature, picked it up again when Havili was brought down, broke a tackle, and put Roigard away through the gap. By this point the Namibia defence was as ragged as an old dog blanket.

Roigard’s second was finished with a deft dummy and pirouette after the All Black pack steamrollered through a Namibian scrum five metres from the tryline. Namibia had actually been up in New Zealand’s 22 a few seconds earlier, when they won a penalty which they chose to kick to the corner and try to drive their way over from a lineout. The crowd applauded their courage, but there is, as they say, a fine line between being brave and being rash, and one turnover and four passes later Namibia were scrambling desperately back to their own try line.

The next time Namibia were awarded a penalty, they took the three points. By then, though, it was simply a question of how many; and the All Blacks, who had suffered their first ever loss in the group stages of a World Cup to France last week, were not in a particularly forgiving mood. Damian McKenzie picked one off with a sweet sidestep around his opposite number Tiaan Swanepoel. Fainga’anuku took a different route for his, and simply dragged three tacklers over the tryline with him. The All Blacks had earned their bonus point in just 25 minutes of play.

Worse still for Namibia, they had lost their centre, Le Roux Malan, with a broken ankle that left his foot dangling off the end of his leg. The injury was so gruesome that the referee, Luke Pearce, took one look at it then had to turn away and catch his breath again.

The rain was lashing down now, too, and the Namibians were, understandably, beginning to look pretty sorry for themselves. There was another try for McKenzie, and one for Anton Lienert-Brown, who chased down his own hack ahead, and it was 38-3 at half-time.

It did not get any prettier in the second half, when New Zealand’s forwards started to cut loose too. De Groot battered his way over, so did Dalton Papali’i, who simply ran straight through Torsten van Jaarsveld’s attempted tackle. Havili enjoyed an easy finish when he was put through by Ardie Savea. Caleb Clarke got one as well.

New Zealand’s last, a lacerating run from the halfway line by Richie Mo’unga, may have been the best of them. Namibia kept plugging away, and kicked a couple of penalties to the corner in yet more futile attempts to try to drive their way over – at one point they had a 12-man maul going. But they still didn’t get there.