Coach Phil Davies named his 23-man squad on Tuesday for the first ever meeting between the sides, including 10 players with previous experience at the global tournament.
Burger is by far the most high-profile as he plays in his third World Cup, along with scrumhalf Eugene Jantjies and loose-forward Tinus du Plessis.
“We want to start building momentum with the rest of the tournament in mind and for each match we will use a 23-man strategy in order to sustain an 80-minute performance required at this level,” Davies said on Tuesday.
“We have also looked at the World Cup as a four-match programme and have full confidence in our 31-man squad to reach our goals.”
One of those goals is to win a first ever World Cup match having been defeated in each of their previous 15, conceding 974 points in the process.
Even the most optimistic Namibian fan would be hard-pressed to form an argument for that to happen in this fixture, but with games against Georgia and Tonga to come, a competitive showing against the world champions would build confidence.
“It’s the ultimate challenge in rugby but I am pretty confident we’ll give a performance,” Burger told reporters.
“Realistically, we can’t really look at the scoreline. We should obviously try to win, that’s the way we play, but it’s all about what we can take away from the special moments during the match.
"Like keeping them for 10 minutes on our goal line, or putting together a couple of sets of play, or breaking their line and scoring a great try.”
Team: 1-Jaco Engels, 2-Torsten van Jaarsveld, 3-Johannes Coetzee, 4-Tjiuee Uanivi, 5-Pieter-Jan van Lill, 6-Jacques Burger (captain), 7-Tinus du Plessis, 8-Leneve Damens, 9-Eugene Jantjies, 10-Theuns Kotze, 11-Conrad Marais, 12-Johan Deysel, 13-JC Greyling, 14-David Philander, 15-Johan Tromp.
Replacements: 16-Louis van der Westhuizen, 17-Casper Viviers, 18-Raoul Larson, 19-Renaldo Bothma, 20-Janco Venter, 21-Rohan Kitshoff, 22-Eneill Buitendag, 23-Chrysander Botha.
(Reporting by Nick Said, editing by Ed Osmond; nick.said@thomsonreuters.com; Reuters Messaging: nick.said.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net; +27 83 272 2948)
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