Rassie Erasmus named his side for the Baltimore decider on Monday, then volunteered that his own fly-half is not yet at his best. Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu starts anyway, with the kicking tee that won South Africa two Tests.
Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu has started all three Tests against New Zealand this series. He has finished none of them at fly-half.
On Monday evening in Baltimore, Rassie Erasmus was asked whether the jersey ought to be Manie Libbok’s on Saturday. He kept it where it was. Then he said this about the man he had just picked.
“There’s some areas where he’s not 100% hitting his straps for us yet, but we must remember he was out for a very long time, and it’s only his fourth game back, only his third full game that he’s played.”
Coaches do not usually say that about a player they have just named in a series decider. Erasmus did, in public, five days out.
Except that selection was never made on form. It was made by a calf strain in a Cape Town training session, and nothing since has undone it.
Kick-off in Baltimore is 23h00 South African time, 17h00 EDT, live on SuperSport.
The Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu selection nobody actually made
Go back to 24 August, two days after New Zealand won the first Test 33-16 at Ellis Park.
Erasmus dropped him. Handré Pollard was named at 10 for Cape Town and Feinberg-Mngomezulu was handed the number 23 jersey, two days after a first Test in which his errors had been the most discussed thing about the Springboks backline. The head coach took the defeat on himself at that announcement. The fly-half took the demotion.
He never played a minute of that demotion. Pollard pulled a calf in training on the Wednesday and was withdrawn on the Friday morning, and the jersey went straight back.
South Africa won in Cape Town. They won again in Soweto. Feinberg-Mngomezulu has worn 10 in every Test since, and at no point in between has Erasmus publicly changed his assessment of him on merit. The team changed once, on a calf strain, and reverted.
Which is what makes Monday’s sentence worth stopping on. It is the first time in this series that Erasmus has said anything critical about him out loud, and he chose the week of the decider to do it.
Ten weeks, not three to six months
The cushioning clause in that quote is doing real work, and it is fair.
On 30 May, scoring a try for the Stormers in their United Rugby Championship quarter-final win over Cardiff at DHL Stadium, Feinberg-Mngomezulu was ankle-tapped by Ioan Lloyd and tore the syndesmosis in his ankle, the ligament joining the two bones of the lower leg. The initial prognosis after scans was three to six months. That ruled him out of the rest of the URC and the whole of South Africa’s July internationals.
He was back in ten weeks.
He returned against Argentina in Buenos Aires on 8 August, kicked a seventh-minute penalty and a conversion before the break, and was off the field by the hour. Two weeks after that he was starting a Test against New Zealand at altitude. He is 24 years old.
So when Erasmus says the man has been out a long time, the record backs him. Dan Carter watched him last month and said nobody becomes world class overnight, and Carter was talking about a player who had at that point been back for a fortnight.
Read also: the half-back combination Erasmus believes settles the series, and why he has changed the other half of it for Baltimore.
Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu has been moved off 10 in every Test
Go through the three team sheets and the same thing has happened to him every time.
Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu has not been substituted once in this series. He has also not seen out a single Test in the fly-half jersey. At Ellis Park he shifted to full-back. In Cape Town he moved to full-back at half-time. In Soweto he was there inside ten minutes, because Kolbe broke his jaw ten minutes into the third Test and Libbok came on into a backline down to six men while Feinberg-Mngomezulu sat out a yellow card for knocking down an Ardie Savea offload.
Three Tests, three different routes to the same place. Some of it was planned, some of it was an ambulance.
Either way the hardest minutes of every match, the ones Erasmus keeps saying South Africa are losing, have been played by somebody else in the 10 jersey.
Baltimore is set up differently. Damian Willemse starts at full-back, back from the hamstring injury he picked up in Cape Town. Libbok is at 23 again. If Feinberg-Mngomezulu is going to be moved this time, somebody has to be displaced to do it — and on the evidence of three Tests, that is the question the fourth one actually asks of him.
The tee is where this series is being won, and it is his now
New Zealand have outscored South Africa on tries in this series, 13 to 8, and are still a Test behind. The tee is why.
Across three Tests South Africa have landed 14 of 15 shots at goal for 36 points. New Zealand have landed 9 of 14 for 18, every one of them a conversion. South Africa have scored exactly twice as many points from the tee, in a series they trail 13-8 on tries and 83-78 on aggregate points.
| Test | Springboks from the tee | All Blacks from the tee |
|---|---|---|
| Ellis Park, 22 Aug | Kolbe 4 from 4, 11 pts | Love 4 from 5, 8 pts |
| Cape Town, 29 Aug | Kolbe 7 from 7, 18 pts | Love 3 from 4, 6 pts |
| Soweto, 5 Sep | Feinberg-Mngomezulu 3 from 4, 7 pts | Love 1 from 4, McKenzie 1 from 1, 4 pts |
Sources: allblacks.com scorers lines, Sky Sports and rugby365 match reports. Official scorers lines record successful kicks only.
Cheslin Kolbe took every one of those kicks for two Tests and missed none of them. He did not board the charter to Baltimore. In Soweto the tee passed to Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, who missed his first attempt, a wide conversion of Kurt-Lee Arendse’s try, and then landed the next three, including the penalty on 71 minutes that put the game beyond a one-score reply.
He did that having already been sin-binned, from a position he had not started in, in his third match back. It is the most convincing thing he has done in the series, and almost nobody wrote about it, because Libbok’s passing was the better story that night.
Nobody has named South Africa’s goal-kicker for Baltimore. There is only one man in the 23 who has kicked at goal in this series.
Why Libbok is still on the bench, in Erasmus’s own words
The argument for starting Libbok in Baltimore was made on this site on Monday, and Erasmus went the other way. His reasoning has nothing to do with which of the two is the better fly-half.
Defence is the reason Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu starts.
“Apart from Sacha’s obviously skill that he has and many things that he can do well, he’s a really good defender, and that’s normally one of the big things that the All Blacks try and get, a real fast start.”
Libbok waits for something else entirely, which is fatigue.
“The game is different the last 30 minutes when everybody’s a little bit more tired, there’s obviously more gaps and forwards that’s a little bit more heavy-footed and struggle to fill the gaps.”
Those two answers describe one jersey doing two jobs. Survive the opening, then punish whatever is left of the New Zealand pack after an hour. So Libbok is on the bench doing a specific job for the last half-hour, not queuing behind Feinberg-Mngomezulu in a pecking order.
Watch where Feinberg-Mngomezulu stands in the defensive line on Saturday. A 10 who folds behind the line and lets a back-rower fill his channel is being hidden. A 10 who holds the front line and comes off the line with his inside shoulder is being used. Erasmus has just told everyone which of those he thinks he has.
What a coach gains by saying it out loud
Saying it out loud five days out does a job that saying it privately would not. It moves the weight. A 24-year-old starting a series decider carries every missed touch himself. Tell the room first that he is four games back from a long injury and he barely carries any of it. Victor Matfield called it second-year syndrome and gave him the jersey anyway — Erasmus has done something more useful than that. He has pre-written the excuse in public so the player does not have to carry it privately.
He took the Ellis Park defeat on himself in August for the same reason, and it shaped what Erasmus chose to talk about after Soweto too. Protect the player and absorb the criticism yourself. Then pick him again.
Handré Pollard could have been picked. Erasmus said so plainly.
“Handré is almost ready. We could have selected Handré as well, and he’ll probably play against Australia.”
Almost ready, and left out on purpose. A coach hedging his bets does not do that five days before a series decider.
What Saturday actually settles
South Africa have not won a series against New Zealand since 1976. They lead this one 2-1, and Saturday in Baltimore is the last of four.
For Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu it settles something narrower and more personal. He has spent this series being moved, binned, dropped and reinstated by injury, and he has still ended it holding the shirt and the kicking tee for the biggest eighty minutes of his career. The coach who picked him has said, on the record, that he is not yet where he needs to be.
Nobody gets a cleaner run at proving a man wrong than that.
Frequently asked
Who starts at fly-half for the Springboks in Baltimore?
Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, with Manie Libbok on the bench at 23. It is his fourth consecutive start of the series.
What did Rassie Erasmus say about Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu?
That there are “some areas where he’s not 100% hitting his straps for us yet”, while pointing out he had been out for a long time and that Baltimore follows only his fourth game back from injury.
Why is Handré Pollard not playing?
Erasmus said Pollard is “almost ready” and could have been selected, but chose continuity. He expects Pollard to play against Australia in Perth on Sunday 27 September.
What was Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu’s injury?
He tore the syndesmosis in his ankle scoring a try for the Stormers against Cardiff on 30 May 2026. The initial prognosis was three to six months. He returned in ten weeks, against Argentina on 8 August.
Who kicks the goals for South Africa now?
Cheslin Kolbe kicked 11 points at Ellis Park and 18 in Cape Town before fracturing his jaw. Feinberg-Mngomezulu took over in Soweto, landing three of four. He is the only goal-kicker in the Baltimore matchday 23 who has kicked at goal in this series.
Springboks team to face the All Blacks in Baltimore: one goal-kicker in the 23
Starting XV
- 15 Damian Willemse (DHL Stormers) – 54 caps, 76 pts (8t, 9c, 4p, 2dg)
- 14 Kurt-Lee Arendse (Mitsubishi Dynaboars) – 34 caps, 130 pts (26t)
- 13 Jesse Kriel (Canon Eagles) – 93 caps, 125 pts (25t)
- 12 Damian de Allende (Wild Knights) – 102 caps, 60 pts (12t)
- 11 Ethan Hooker (Hollywoodbets Sharks) – 12 caps, 10 pts (2t)
- 10 Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu (DHL Stormers) – 23 caps, 184 pts (9t, 47c, 15p)
- 9 Morne van den Berg (10bet Lions) – 9 caps, 25 pts (5t)
- 8 Jasper Wiese (Urayasu D-Rocks) – 48 caps, 20 pts (4t)
- 7 Pieter-Steph du Toit (Toyota Verblitz) – 101 caps, 70 pts (14t)
- 6 Siya Kolisi (captain, DHL Stormers) – 106 caps, 75 pts (15t)
- 5 Ruan Nortje (Kubota Spears) – 23 caps, 5 pts (1t)
- 4 Eben Etzebeth (Hollywoodbets Sharks) – 145 caps, 45 pts (9t)
- 3 Wilco Louw (DHL Stormers) – 34 caps, 10 pts (2t)
- 2 Malcolm Marx (Kubota Spears) – 92 caps, 140 pts (28t)
- 1 Ox Nche (Hollywoodbets Sharks) – 51 caps, 0 pts
Replacements
- 16 Deon Fourie (DHL Stormers) – 15 caps, 10 pts (2t)
- 17 Gerhard Steenekamp (Vodacom Bulls) – 22 caps, 10 pts (2t)
- 18 Thomas du Toit (Hollywoodbets Sharks) – 36 caps, 10 pts (2t)
- 19 Lood de Jager (Wild Knights) – 76 caps, 25 pts (5t)
- 20 Andre Esterhuizen (Hollywoodbets Sharks) – 34 caps, 30 pts (6t)
- 21 Cameron Hanekom (Vodacom Bulls) – 5 caps, 5 pts (1t)
- 22 Cobus Reinach (DHL Stormers) – 56 caps, 100 pts (20t)
- 23 Manie Libbok (Kintetsu Liners) – 33 caps, 143 pts (2t, 47c, 13p)
Two men in that 23 have a goal-kicking record for South Africa. Only one of them has taken a kick at goal in this series. Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu has 47 conversions and 15 penalties in 23 Tests; Libbok has 47 conversions and 13 penalties in 33. The records are level. The trust is not.
The number behind the fifty-year drought
South Africa have played New Zealand 113 times and won 45 of them.
| Springboks v All Blacks | Total |
|---|---|
| Played | 113 |
| Won / Lost / Drawn | 45 / 64 / 4 |
| Points for / against | 1,928 / 2,352 |
| Tries scored / conceded | 188 / 261 |
| Win percentage | 39.8% |
Source: SA Rugby.
A 39.8% return against one opponent over 113 Tests is the context for everything Erasmus said on Monday. South Africa do not beat New Zealand often enough to treat a 2-1 lead as an advantage. All of that weight now sits on a 24-year-old fly-half in his fourth match back from a ten-week ankle injury.
Your turn
The other reading is that Erasmus has just told everybody his starting fly-half is not right and picked him anyway, because there was no braver option in the squad. One of those is a plan and one is a shrug. Which did you watch on Monday?
