Springbok flyhalf Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu will get his first captaincy experience at senior rugby level when he leads the DHL Stormers against Leicester Tigers in a fourth round Investec Champions Cup clash in Cape Town on Saturday (5:15pm).
The supremely talented pivot has been touted as a future national captain but this will be the first time he leads a team at Champions Cup or URC level and it will be interesting to see how it pans out as he heads a team that is slightly weaker than the one that would have been anticipated because of injuries and, in the space of regular skipper Salmaan Moerat, family commitments.
Bok backline players Damian Willemse and Cobus Reinach are both out injured this week, with Reinach recovering from a knee injury sustained in the Vodacom URC derby against the Vodacom Bulls and Willemse out due to concussion protocols, which is also the reason that Warrick Gelant won’t be playing on Saturday.
Gelant has been replaced at fullback by Wandisile Simelane, with Suleiman Hartzenberg continuing in the No 13 jersey he wore against Harlequins in London last week. Leolin Zas is back on the left wing, Stef Ungerer is wearing the No 9, and the regular back row of Paul de Villiers, Ben-Jason Dixon (who did play last week) and Evan Roos have been reunited.
Ruben van Heerden played against Quins and has been joined by JD Schickerling in the second row, with Connor Evans on the bench and Adre Smith out injured in addition to the absence of Moerat. The Stormers have an all Bok front row in the form of Ntuthuko Mchunu, Andre-Hugo Venter and Neethling Fouche fronting for this one.
Hooker JJ Kotze is back from injury and plays off the bench alongside Vernon Matongo and Zachary Porthen, while young JC Mars will get an opportunity to show what he can do at fullback or wing later in the game playing off the bench.
Dobson is excited about Mars’ potential but admitted he would have preferred not to have the injuries that have forced him to play Mars in what is effectively a knock-out game.
But it was Feinberg-Mngomezulu’s appointment as captain that attracted most focus at the team announcement press conference.
“Sacha has always been earmarked as a future Stormers captain,” said Stormers director of rugby John Dobson.
“With Sacha away in the national set-up last year we gained a bit of momentum with Ruhan Nel as captain so we continued with him as he is a really good leader, and we thought that as our No 10 and game driver having the extra burden of captaincy might be too much. But he has all the technical components and now that is future has been cleared up and he has signed long term we must invest in his leadership.”
Dobson added that the captaincy was in the balance until Friday morning as it was hoped that Nel would be available to play, in which case would have captained the team, but once it was established that it would be too much of a risk to play Nel and wiser to give him another week to recover from an ankle injury, he had little hesitation in phoning Sacha to inform him.
“It was a great way to end the week with a call like that. It is a great privilege to be captaining the Stormers because I have been a Stormers supporter from as long as I can remember,” said Feinberg-Mngomezulu.
“It is an honour to lead a team that has guys like JD (Shickerling), Neethling Fouche in it, as they are also leaders and I will lean on them. Salmaan will be back next week and so will Ruhan so it is no big deal really in the sense that I am just filling their boots for now.
"At any time though it is a great honour to wear the Stormers captain’s armband and this is a great chance to drive the team forward.”
Dobson said that Nel’s status was touch and go but “if we pushed him this week we risked losing him for eight to 12 weeks so when he wasn’t entirely comfortable in testing we took the conservative route”.
He added that if the Stormers were playing a final on Saturday both Nel and Reinach would probably have played and both are expected to be available for the Sharks game next week, along with Willemse and Gelant.
DHL Stormers team: Wandisile Simelane, Dylan Maart, Suleiman Hartzenberg, Jonathan Roche, Leolin Zas, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu (captain), Stefan Ungerer, Evan Roos, Ben-Jason Dixon, Paul de Villiers, Ruben van Heerden, JD Schickerling, Neethling Fouché, André-Hugo Venter, Ntuthuko Mchunu.
Replacements: JJ Kotzé, Vernon Matongo, Zachary Porthen, Connor Evans, Marcel Theunissen, Imad Khan, Luke Burger, JC Mars.