The need for balance. That is the key message Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus, and his attack coach Tony Brown have been putting across to the exciting young flyhalf Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu ahead of the kick-off to what will be his second international season.
The 23-year-old DHL Stormers player has been selected as the starting pivot for Saturday’s season opener against the Barbarians in Cape Town. In many ways he is a player tailored to be playing for the invitation team that the Boks will be opposing at the DHL Stadium,. The Barbarians are all about entertainment, and Feinberg-Mngomezulu’s unique skill set and flamboyant playing style captured the public’s imagination towards the end of the Vodacom United Rugby Championship season.
Feinberg-Mngomezulu has an impressive array of skills, and some might call them tricks. At times in the last few games the Stormers played at home in their drive for a place in the URC playoffs Feinberg-Mngomezulu did things that defied belief. He could have scored four tries on his own against Connacht were it not for his decision to throw a backflip pass to send in his old schoolmate Suleiman Hartzenberg.
But while that spot of dazzle from Feinberg-Mngomezulu would have added to the praise heaped on him and the acclaim he enjoyed from the Cape rugby public, there were those who asked if it was completely necessary. He could and maybe should have scored himself and if the pass hadn’t come off it could have cost the Stormers the result in a game they won by the narrowest of margins.
COULD COST BOKS IN TIGHT GAME
There were other bits of flamboyance, born out of confidence and an eagerness to please and entertain, that got in his way during that run of four home wins for his franchise team. And while there is a lobby, which includes some ex-players who had an attacking philosophy in their playing days, that says he should be left free to express himself, there is another side that has an understandable concern that by not sticking to script he could cost the Boks a tight game.
Indeed, there were questions over his game management when the Boks lost by a solitary point to Ireland in the second test of last year’s series in Durban. That was the day he found himself called onto the field at fullback when Willie le Roux was injured at a very early stage of the game.
That Feinberg-Mngomezulu found himself in that situation at all was testament to the faith Erasmus has in him. The Bok coach underlined that faith even further when he chose Feinberg-Mngomezulu as his starting flyhalf in the Castle Lager Rugby Championship games in Australia and then, in particular, when he gave him the No10 for the first game against the All Blacks in Johannesburg.
WORKING ON BALANCE
The player vindicated the coach’s faith in all three of those games, and yet the question persists - wouldn’t it benefit him and the team if he just wound his head in a little bit when it comes to his hunger to dazzle with his skills. Erasmus appears to think so, for he told the team announcement media conference ahead of the Barbarians game that he and Brown, together with the double World Cup winning veteran flyhalf Handre Pollard, are working on him bringing a bit more balance to his game.
“You have to remember what we are working with, we are working with players who come from 21 different clubs, which is why we have alignment camps,” said Erasmus.
“It is at those alignment camps that we work with the players and let them know what skill sets we may need and what may have to change (when they get to us). We are obviously blessed to have Sacha, Manie (Libbok), Handre and even Damian (Willemse) as a potential fourth flyhalf. We have four lekker (great) flyhalves.
“Sachas has only eight test caps to his name. He is still young and he is still learning and we need to be aware of that. I remember playing against Jonny Wilkinson right at the start of his career and he was not great against us. But then he went on to become one of the world's great players.
“Sacha is being given an understanding of what we are trying to do. We don’t want him to put away the skill sets that make him what he is and make him the player he is. But Sacha will be hyped up, and for him it must be hard not to go onto the field and think you have to make magic all the time, with every touch of the ball.
“We are getting the message through to him that it is not necessary to think like that. He needs to bring a bit of balance. Maybe make it 70/30 rather than 100 per cent of the time (that he is trying things). Tony has been working with him a lot on this, and Handre too.”
HIS WIZARDRY REMAINS THE POINT OF DIFFERENCE
A good illustration of what the Boks are working with in Feinberg-Mngomezulu can be found by using a cricketing analogy. The Australian Glenn Maxwell is regarded as one of the foremost batsmen in the world in the white ball formats and is universally both feared and respected, yet while he has won many games for his team there have been times when he has let the team down with his all out attack approach. Sometimes he comes across as a bit hit and miss.
Feinberg-Mngomezulu won’t want that and the Boks won’t want that, and there was a perception that he was guilty of overplaying in the Stormers’ quarterfinal loss to the Glasgow Warriors, where maybe that aspect of the Stormers game was one of the several chickens that came home to roost that night.
What Erasmus is saying is not that Feinberg-Mngomezulu must shelve his strengths and go to the extreme of being one of those automaton flyhalves that have sometimes played for the Boks in the past. Pollard, because he ended up playing at a World Cup where the loss to Japan made it necessary to revert to an extremely conservative template to get the Boks out of a hole, might be the perfect example of one who may have flair coached out of him early in his career.
Rather the drive is to find a space somewhere in the middle ground between extremes. With the obvious leaning being more towards his attacking skills, otherwise there’d be no point in selecting him. As Erasmus says, 70/30, with the 70 assumed to be the wizardry that brings the point of difference to other less gifted players.