DUBLIN, IRELAND: Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu will face another test of character when he runs out at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin on Saturday.
Two Springbok players were not up for selection to face Ireland due to injuries. One of them was veteran flyhalf Handre Pollard.
Wing Kurt-Lee Arendse sustained a concussion in the match against the Italians last weekend and returned home to South Africa, while Pollard is nursing an Achilles injury.
“I am not saying we were going to select him [Pollard], I’m not using that as an excuse,” Springbok head coach Rassie Erasmus told a room full of Irish reporters.
“I think we would’ve selected Manie [Libbok] and Grant [Williams] on the bench and Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu to start.
According to Erasmus, it has always been the plan to build Feinberg-Mngomezulu’s confidence week after week, playing against tougher opponents to gain experience at the highest level.
“Handre understands it. He’s 31. Jonny Wilkinson played until he was 38. So Handre knows he’s got another World Cup in him.
“I think he understands that we want Sacha to learn lessons in every game, like playing in France under the pressure, that’s a different thing.
“Playing here on Saturday with Zombie [the song] playing, he will understand a bit of pressure that comes from that,” the coach explained, adding, “So [we are] growing him from level to level, with different centres next to him. We are trying to keep the combination of him and Cobus pretty tight.
“They are also the Stormers pairing now.
“So we have nice security on the bench with Manie and Grant and also Damian Willemse, who can go to No.10.
“We have a word in Afrikaans called a ‘snotklap’ [smack in the face], and he [Feinberg-Mngomezulu] can get a ‘snotklap’ in the face somewhere in a game and realise this is a different level.
“So that’s going to happen to him somewhere, and then he must handle that.
“And we are trying to get him through all those different stages of intensity.”
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Erasmus said Feinberg-Mngomezulu has grown in confidence as he has gained more experience in the tough games like the one against France.
“In the beginning, he was very confident, but he struggled to express himself. He was buggering up the game plan, and then he started to understand that there is a place for his skills in the game plan.
“Then he started to talk and ask a lot of questions and really demanded a lot more from the guys around him because the No.10 is running the backline and plays.
“He’s always had the talent on the field, but I think he is growing [in his head] and feeling comfortable.
“But I know he will be very uncomfortable in this cauldron on Saturday.”
Erasmus also revealed that he was in two minds about the lock pairing up until Thursday morning, wondering if this was not the right game to pick a 7-1 split on the bench.
“Until this morning, I woke and wondered if we shouldn’t go 7-1, but with Franco [Mostert] and Lood [de Jager’s] hearings, it buggers up the training sessions if you bracket a lot of players.
“So there are a few guys with niggles, and we are going into our 14th match this season, so I’m just glad. If one of our guys does go down in the one training session we have left, and we are pretty thin at lock.
“Even this morning, I spoke to the other coaches, maybe this is a game that we also go 7-1.
RG Snyman will start his 50th Test for the Springboks from the bench, something the Boks don’t normally do when a player reaches a milestone.
But Erasmus explained it was necessary due to the dynamics of the available locks.
“It would’ve been lovely to start him on Saturday, but he knows his role off the bench.
“We chatted about it, and playing off the bench in his 50th, he totally understands. With two of the other locks unavailable and one injured, he was obviously always going to be in the team, and for that he is grateful.”
