Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu has been warmly praised for the way he has added maturity and game management to his “generational” talent.
The Springboks fly-half is now the joint top points scorer in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship with 147, a tally which has helped the DHL Stormers secure a home quarter-final in the play-offs with a round of matches to spare.
He drew level with the Lions’ Chris Smith with his two-try 21-point haul in last Friday’s 38-38 draw with Ulster Rugby in Belfast, where he beat more defenders (11) than any other player in the league over the weekend. As well as leading the way for points scored, he is also in the top six for tries scored (9), clean breaks (19), metres gained (705), defenders beaten (48), try assists (5) and goal kicking (102).
It’s little wonder that DHL Stormers head coach John Dobson is so delighted with the way the 24-year-old is performing. “I think he is a generational player. We are going to enjoy him for a while to come,” he said. “He has grown up very quickly from being the X-Factor, playing off the cuff guy, to taking the responsibility of driving the team.
“When he first came along, it was almost like a party impact, to do something crazy. Now he has to drive the team forward before his own stuff, and he has definitely matured. He is the most vocal guy on the field.
“You think it’s all this natural ability, but his work ethic and his detail are magnificent. He spends a lot of time previewing the opposition, looking at what their triggers are. I absolutely don’t coach him. All I have to do with him is make sure the rest of the team understands how he is going to play because he is such an individualist.”
Dobson added, “We possibly made a mistake earlier in the year when we put Sacha as the captain because it put a lot of responsibility on him. He was the game driver, the X-Factor, the captain; he had to worry about the referee and off-the-field stuff. His diary was full. Not being captain has freed him up.”
Feinberg-Mngomezulu has played a key part in the Stormers winning 12 and drawing one of their 17 Vodacom URC matches this season to lie just a point behind table-topping Glasgow Warriors.
They have already booked a home quarter-final and are now looking to pave the way for a Cape Town semi-final by finishing in the top two.
Depending on how Glasgow fare away to Ulster, the South African outfit could yet finish first, which would give them home advantage all the way through to the Grand Final, should they progress that far. As such, they are determined to secure a victory in Friday night’s final regular season fixture against play-off chasing Cardiff Rugby at the Arms Park.
“We sort of dreamt when we were sailing unbeaten that we could come on this tour not having to win games,” said Dobson. “But we didn’t achieve that. We lost some local derbies, and we lost to Connacht. So we are selecting a team with the aim of winning this match. It’s a big game for us because it can give us a path to more home play-offs or certainly the semi-final.
“You see from this competition that home advantage is so important. The last two years we have gone to away quarter-finals and that wasn’t good for us. We lost both of them in Scotstoun.”
Giving his verdict on seventh-placed Cardiff, he said: “They have been a surprise. I kept expecting them to fall away given their squad, but they have been top eight throughout and got some really good results. They have been competitive in every game they have played.
“Cardiff is a problem. We have never won at the Arms Park, so it’s a problematic game for us.
“It’s just a tough place to play. It feels like everything is on top of you, and there is no room. The Arms Park is classic.”
As for what he is expecting from their Welsh hosts, Dobson said: “Callum Sheedy is a threat with the way he drives the team. He is clever with those attacking kicks, the little cross kicks and that sort of thing. They have got a massive contestable game in the air, and defensively, they are really good. It’s a tough team to break down.”
Looking at his team’s season so far, Dobson said, “This is our best squad yet. We are much better than we were in terms of depth. We are pretty content that we have been top or second pretty much the whole year. But if we were to lose a home quarter, we'd say it’s a disappointing season. If we don’t get to a semi-final, then we are not going to be content.”
The Stormers are aiming for a second league title, having triumphed in their first year in the Vodacom URC back in 2022. Dobson feels the tournament has moved on significantly since then.
“It’s much more competitive,” he said. “It’s a very hard league to win. It’s definitely harder now than when we won it. It’s a proper league in terms of the investment in squads and coaching. There are no easy games now. The league has definitely got better.”