{"id":232857,"date":"2026-05-10T04:17:56","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T02:17:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/namibia\/namibia-rugby-returns-on-sombre-note\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T04:17:56","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T02:17:56","slug":"namibia-rugby-returns-on-sombre-note","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/namibia\/namibia-rugby-returns-on-sombre-note\/","title":{"rendered":"Namibia: Rugby Returns On Sombre Note"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"34\"><em>The Namibian Rugby Premier League continues on a sombre note this weekend, in the shadow of the untimely death of former FNB Unam captain Graham April, who died in a car accident last Friday.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"33\">A minute&#8217;s silence will be held at all the weekend&#8217;s matches, while Namibia Rugby Union vice president Johan Diergaardt confirms that a memorial service will be held at Unam Stadium on Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"26\">Diergaardt, who coached Unam during their premier league title-winning years from 2015 to 2017, says he was&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202605080220.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 Southern Africa <a title=\"Namibia\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/southern-africa\/namibia\/\">Namibia<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Namibian Rugby Premier League continues on a sombre note this weekend, in the shadow of the untimely death of former FNB Unam captain Graham April, who died in a car accident last Friday. A minute&#8217;s silence will be held at all the weekend&#8217;s matches, while Namibia Rugby Union vice president Johan Diergaardt confirms that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":232858,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[723],"tags":[258,256,4706,724,257,8313,5068,8495,54363,254],"class_list":["post-232857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-namibia","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-namibia","tag-namibia-news","tag-news","tag-note","tag-returns","tag-rugby","tag-sombre","tag-south-africa-today"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}