Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu’s record breaking individual performance for the Springboks last weekend came as no surprise for people in the know who understand his rare genius. It was always a question of when he’d show the world his array of gifts, it was never a case of ‘if’.
The 23-year-old has arguably been held back a bit more than he should have been in this international season. If he was playing for another country that didn’t have other world class flyhalves like Manie Libbok and Handre Pollard in their ranks, he’d be playing in every test match.
His baptism against the All Blacks in Johannesburg last year was surely enough to confirm he has it to play and excel at the highest level.
Yet there have been concerns - apart from his youth and relative lack of game time at flyhalf at first class level, for let’s not forget he had played most of his rugby for the Stormers at centre before he made his Bok debut, there were also concerns he may be too individualistic.
Which may have been what led to Bok head coach Rassie Erasmus and his attack coach Tony Brown making public their view that Feinberg-Mngomezulu needed to work on getting balance to his game.
Put another way, it was felt that he should bring less bling, something that the DHL Stormers want from him, but which has cost even his franchise team on occasion.
He told the media ahead of his watershed game, the one where he scored a new Bok individual mark of 37 points in a 67-30 Castle Lager Rugby Championship win over Argentina, that he feels he is succeeding in the mission that he has been set.
“It is not just down to a game on the Saturday, it mostly down to what I do in midweek, during training,” said Feinberg-Mngomezulu.
“I feel like the preparations in midweek are going better for me. I am executing what is needed in the training week. There is not a lengthy amount of time to do it at the weekend (in games) so I have been working hard during the week. What they (coaches) want from me I fully understand now and I feel like I am doing it.”
SUPREME WORK ETHIC
That Feinberg-Mngomezulu has worked hard at the detail that he feels he needs to get right will not surprise the man who coached him when he was playing first team at Bishops, Wes Chetty. He remembered a loss to Stellenberg, and Feinberg-Mngomezulu’s reaction to a game where he had not helped his team with some wayward place-kicking.
“Sacha’s biggest weakness in those days was his kicking for posts and we had another talented youngster who now doing really well at hockey who did the kicking for us,” recalled Chetty.
“But when Sacha came to me at the first team he started to work on his kicking from the tee in the assumption we might need him at some point. Which we did in a game against Stellenberg.
"He had a really bad day. I was grumpy as I drove to pick up my wife an hour or so after the game, and there was Sacha, out on the empty (Bishops) field kicking at posts.
“After that I would see him doing that so often. I would go for a run early on a Sunday morning and there he would be. He was obsessed with getting it right, and the proof of the pudding was the success he got after that.”
From what Chetty says, it is easy to imagine that Feinberg-Mngomezulu has still been working long hours on his place-kicking, because he wasn’t particularly flush towards the end of the last Vodacom URC season with the Stormers, and he also missed some kicks when playing for the Boks in the early part of the international season.
For all the focus on his amazing running skills, he is an excellent field kicker, but because he is naturally gifted that doesn’t mean he doesn’t still work incredibly hard on developing those skills. And the proof of the pudding was in the eating as he turned in an almost immaculate display in that sphere in the rout of Argentina in Durban.
“I have been working on contestable kicking, there are always work ons, not just for me but all the 10s and 15s,” he said.
“When the coaches spoke of me needing to be 80 per cent/20 per cent (team and individual) the demand is around me playing to the fundamental parts of the Bok game plan, meaning how we want to kick and where we want to kick. Handre (Pollard) has done that well and he ha set an extremely high standard.”
TOO GOOD AT TOO MANY THINGS
The thing is though that Feinberg-Mngomezulu has such a wondrous skill set that it is hard for hi not to try things that others wouldn’t even think of attempting.
“It is hard for him to rein himself in given the gifts he has. His out-of-hand kicking game has always been phenomenal, his cross kicks, his little dinks and probes,” says Chetty.
“One of his biggest attributes is his ability to kick and gather himself. He likes being on the advantage line, but is able to transfer to his boot so quickly that if there is any kind of space behind the defenders it is always on for him.”
When Chetty was speaking it was in the early part of the international season, but his words proved prescient as that was precisely what got Feinberg-Mngomezulu’s game going against the Pumas - the kick into space that everyone thought might end up being a 50/22 but was turned into a try by Feinberg-Mngomezulu’s sheer pace and ability to chase his own kick.
So if he has all these gifts what is the problem? For Brendan Venter, a former Bok centre who has become a respected coach, it is simple - he may just be too gifted for his own good. Or, to put it more precisely, he was being held back a bit by the sheer range of what he can do.
“If there is one problem that Sacha faces it is that he is too good at too many things,” said Venter. “He is so gifted that his biggest challenge is going to be his ability to manage the magic moments and find the right blend to his game.
"It doesn’t matter how gifted you are, there comes a time when people work you out, and when they do that you have to become a bit more conservative. Fortunately he is very bright and he understands rugby, and he has the skill set to do almost anything.
“But that leads to a tendency to overplay and then he gets the blend wrong. That is his biggest challenge and it will take time for him to figure it out, but he will because he’s sharp.”
REMINISCENT OF A YOUNG NAAS
Another former Bok centre and also, like Venter, a former Bok assistant coach, Dick Muir, and while he agrees with Venter’s view, he is also wary of any move to curb Feinberg-Mngomezulu’s precociousness, something he feels is not necessary because he feels the player has a mature head on his shoulders and also has wise heads around him. Both on the field and in the coaching staff.
“I don’t think there is a skill that Sacha doesn’t possess, and that is very rare. I think it is important though not to put him in a box, to coach what makes him so special out of him,” said Muir.
“Fortunately he has good coaches at international level in Rassie Erasmus and Tony Brown, and John Dobson and his team at the Stormers, that will do what is right. He is in good hands.
"He reminds me of a young Naas Botha. Naas as a youngster. The young Naas possessed every skill. People said he didn’t tackle but you weren’t really allowed to tackle as a flyhalf in the years that Naas was playing.
“The beauty of a player as talented as Sacha is, is that he has angles to his armoury that don’t have to be coached, just encouraged. To coach a kid like that is a pleasure, he is a natural at spotting space and then exploiting it.
"I hear the criticism that he may be too individualistic at this stage of his career but at Springbok level he is playing with experienced players around him, guys like Damian de Allende and Jesse Kriel who have played a lot of international rugby and who he can learn off.”
HAPPY TO LEARN OFF THE ‘BIG DOGS’
Feinberg-Mngomezulu does appear happy at this stage of his career to learn off and take advice from players who are more experienced than him, and he feels lucky to be part of a squad that has such a deep depth of leadership.
“It is not so much a changing of the guard that is taking place, what is happening is that the more time you spend in an environment the more comfortable you become, and all sportsmen improve with the opportunities they get,” said the Bok record breaker.
“You have to take your hats off to the big dogs, the older guys, for helping us and allowing us to get the best we can out of the experience.”
He would have been referencing the players around him like De Allende, but he also appears to value highly what veteran Willie le Roux brings to the mix.
“Willie brings a lot, until you play with the guy you don’t understand how good he is. His rugby IQ out of this world. A lot of things he does go unnoticed, but he takes a lot of pressure off us as game drivers.”
BUILD THE TEAM AROUND HIM
Not that Feinberg-Mngomezulu doesn’t have his own ability to read play and make the right decisions. He has that in spades, but is also a deep thinker on the game.
“The things he does are not just off the bat, they are thought out and would be the product of skills and an ability to see space and opportunities that lesser players don’t,” said Muir.
“If I was coaching him I would give him free licence. You build around someone like Sacha like we did at the Sharks around Ruan Pienaar and Frans Steyn, who were also brilliant from a very young age.”
Christian Stewart, who was considered an excellent playmaker himself in a career that saw him play for both South Africa and Canada, was stunned by what Feinberg-Mngomezulu did for the Stormers in the URC season, and agrees with the consensus that here is a unique talent.
“He has so much going for him. Obviously he has pace, but not just pace in a straight line, and one of the keys for him is his ability to generate pace onto the ball. That is what creates so much time for him to make decisions,” said Stewart.
“He has an extra gear that he can engage, and that is a rare thing. In my day we had two guys who could do that, Carel du Plessis and Danie Gerber. They were both considered generational players, and that is Sacha.
“Of course he does play a playmaking position, which is what might make things tricky for him. I am wary of using the expression individualistic to describe him. That word can be misinterpreted.
"Where he is individualistic is his ability to do stuff than no-one else can. So when he passes he is usually passing to a player with less talent than he has.
“Being the most exciting rugby player in the country to watch, there is a catch in that ratchets up the pressure to perform for the people who are coming to watch him. In the Stormers game after the one against Connacht where he scored a hattrick, I almost felt the pressure for him.”
SHOULD SPECIALISE AT FLYHALF
One thing that Venter is sure of is that Feinberg-Mngomezulu is a natural flyhalf and should not play any other positions.
“In addition to his running, handling and creative skills, he kicks the ball great distances and that is why I personally don’t think he should dabble in any other positions,” he said.
“Because he kicks the ball so far, he is perfect for No 10 and should work on developing in that position. He has a lot of X-factor for flyhalf. Knowing what you want to do and doing it are different things, but Sacha is very instinctive because he’s so gifted.
"He can chip and regather, he can play an inside ball and he can offload, he can just do so many things that it will be difficult for him to rein himself in.
“Finding the right balance to your game must be incredibly hard to do when you are so gifted and feel you are capable of anything and you see space and gaps that other players don’t. Most people naturally end up playing in a style that suits their skill sets.
"At international level those who get the blend right are usually the best. But how do you arrive at the right blend in the spur of the moment during a game?
“Normally in rugby your limitations dictate how you play. The problem with Sacha is that he doesn’t have limitations. When I was playing the flyhalves who ran a lot did so because they couldn’t kick.
"Other players developed their kicking game because they weren’t good runners. Sacha doesn’t have that problem because he is a complete player, he can play a kicking game and a running game and be equally good at both.”