Rassie Erasmus on Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu's development: 'We're trying to build him up'

The young flyhalf ran riot against the Los Pumas last week, scoring a ridiculous 37 points. The Cape Town native has been earmarked from a young age to do great things, and so far, his performances are meeting expectations.  

But competition in the Bok squad is at an all-time high. Currently, double World Cup winner Handre Pollard and the silky Manie Libbok are competing with Feinberg-Mngomezulu for time in the No.10 jersey.

With the rotation policy, many expected Pollard to start this week against the Los Pumas at Twickenham. But Erasmus explained that the quick turnaround and lack of training sessions heavily impacted the decision as he opted for consistency over player rotation.  

"If you take it a little while back, when we got him into the Springboks mix, we played him in two SA 'A' games while we were touring in Ireland, and he played against Bristol and Munster before he joined us for a little bit and then we played him against tier two nations, and then we played him against Ireland," Erasmus told the press in London.

"So we're trying to build him up, and fortunately, it's not him that makes the big hype about himself; if he did, he wouldn't stay in the squad for long."

Feinberg-Mngomezulu only has 15 caps of experience to draw from and Erasmus is eager to see what he can do under pressure. 

"By giving him another chance in the game like this, I'm telling you straight up, it was very tempting to put Handre Pollard for us as coaches but then, he is going to learn a lot from this match, during this week we only have two training sessions, so he needs to keep his head down understand our plan because sometimes a game like that [in Durban] puts more pressure on you in the next game," contiuned the coach.

"So we're putting him through his paces and experiencing this pressure, whether he does well or not, he'll be a better player afterwards. So we tend to do it slowly, but have a nice security like Manie [Libbok] on the bench.

"Then also obviously guys like Andre Esterhuizen, Damian Willemse, and Tony Brown helping him during the week, and then obviously he played off a great platform by the forwards, I really thought he had front foot ball, but if Argentina disrupt us there, then the pressure will go on to him.

"He is 23, an interesting fact is that a World Cup has never been won by a flyhalf who is younger than 25, so he's got some learning to do, but he's putting his head down and he's working really hard."