Twelve months ago, rugby nerds were quietly mumbling that Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu might be “the next Damian Willemse.” Fast-forward to today, and the whispers have turned into rugby Twitter shouting, “This oke might be the next Dan Carter!” Which is quite the jump — from Cape Town cool to Christchurch royalty — and yet, somehow, it doesn’t feel completely ridiculous.
SFM — yes, we’re calling him that now, because typing “Feinberg-Mngomezulu” repeatedly is a finger workout — has just completed a URC season so silky it could be sold as high-end body lotion. Whether he’s playing at 10, 12 or 15, the man oozes composure. He’s got a kicking game more accurate than your uncle’s WhatsApp forwards and a rugby brain that seems to come pre-loaded with GPS, radar, and ChatGPT Premium.
At just 22, he already plays like that one ou at touch who’s five steps ahead, never sweats, and ruins everyone else’s fun by being annoyingly good.
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But back to the Carter comparison. Dangerous territory, that. Dan Carter is the flyhalf equivalent of a Michelin-star meal: classy, clinical, and not remotely affordable. Comparing a kid barely out of varsity to the man who tormented international defences for a decade might seem like a reach. But then you watch SFM put up a 40-metre spiral bomb on a sixpence or slide through a gap with the grace of a jazz pianist, and you start thinking… hang on a minute.
Sure, there’s still work to do. His test debut remains pending, and we all know how unforgiving the step-up to Springbok rugby can be. You don’t just rock up to a Bok camp with good hair and vision — you’ve got to survive a crash course in defence, kick-chase purgatory, and a film session where Rassie Erasmus pauses every missed tackle and says, “Explain.”
But the path is open. With Handré Pollard’s hamstrings now more unreliable than a Joburg power grid, and Manie Libbok bouncing between brilliance and “oops,” there’s space for someone new. Someone who can run a game without needing a miracle every ten minutes. Someone with calm, presence, and — dare we say it — a little swagger.
That someone might just be the Dan Carter of Mowbray.
Or maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Maybe we should hold the comparisons, skip the “next big thing” labels, and just enjoy what we’re watching. Because Feinberg-Mngomezulu — long name, longer highlights reel — is doing something special. Quietly, confidently, and with the kind of understated brilliance that makes you sit up and say, “Yoh, this kid’s the real deal.”
So let’s not call him the next anyone.
Let’s just call him Sacha. For now. Until he gives us no choice but to call him Springbok No. 10.
