Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu

Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu is the most exciting thing to happen to Springbok fly-half play in a generation — a Stormers playmaker with the kind of skill set South Africa has historically imported context for rather than produced. Capped young and fast-tracked by Rassie Erasmus, he offers something Springbok tens have rarely been asked to provide: the ability to win a Test with the ball in hand rather than off the tee.

The tools are extravagant. He has a step off both feet, genuine acceleration through the first gap, a long passing game that moves the Boks’ power runners onto the ball early, and the temperament — evident from his first Tests — of a player who believes big stages are his natural habitat. He kicks goals from distance, covers fifteen and twelve as well as ten, and carries himself with a swagger that South African crowds have adopted instantly.

The debate around him is the classic one for a young ten in a champion team: does the team reshape around his instincts, or do his instincts get sanded down to fit the machine? Erasmus has managed the introduction carefully, blooding him in high-leverage moments without handing him the whole system at once. With the four-Test Greatest Rivalry series against New Zealand under way, this is the stage on which that succession question gets a live audience.

Cape Town-raised, with an English father and Zulu mother, he is fluent in the multiple identities modern South Africa asks of its stars.