Ireland coach Eddie O'Sullivan is convinced Namibia deserve their place at the World Cup party even though his team go into this weekend's game against the Africans as overwhelming favourites.
Namibia were heavily outgunned by the Argentinian pack in Gosford last night, conceding two penalty tries and two pushover scores in their eventual 67-14 defeat.
They have five days to regroup for the Ireland encounter at Aussie Stadium and while they may be confident of not suffering as badly in the forwards, the prospect of Ireland's backs taking them apart is not appealing.
The outcome looks sure to be the latest in a series of mis-matches, heavily criticised since the beginning of the competition. However, O'Sullivan, who has seen life on the other side of the professional fence having been part of the USA Eagles coaching team at the last World Cup, insists it is better for the hammerings to take place than for the makeweights not to be there at all.
"Everyone knows there are tiers within the world rugby structure," he said.
"You have the elite, countries where the game is established professionally in the middle and underneath that you have those who struggle to establish a professional game. If you cut those countries out completely and say they arenot worthy enough to be there, there would be no reason to play the game as a recreational pursuit in that country.
"What the World Cup does is offer teams and players a stage. If we play Namibia on Sunday and someone has a particularly good game for them and ends up getting a professional contract overseas, it would improve the standard of his national team.
"It is something Canada have done very well over the years but we could never quite manage when I was with the USA.
"Also, if you look back a couple of World Cups there are teams who were getting trounced then who are not now because they have learned from the experience.
"It is better to have teams here struggling to compete rather than them be somewhere else where no-one sees them.
"It would be a poorer World Cup without the nations who find it tough and if you asked them, I'm sure they all want to be here as well."