When World Rugby announced its four-man shortlist for 2025 Breakthrough Player of the Year, many fans asked: Where is Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu?
The Springbok playmaker has been one of the standout figures of the Test season – unbeaten in every match he has started, central to their Rugby Championship triumph, and the author of a record-breaking 37-point haul against Argentina in Durban.
Add in a composed, match-winning performance against France, and many believed that if he wasn’t in the conversation for Breakthrough Player, he should have been up for the Player of the Year title itself.
Feinberg-Mngomezulu, though, wasn’t eligible for the Breakthrough Player award.
The answer lay buried in the fine print of World Rugby’s criteria: “This award is open to all men’s fifteebs players who have played no more than one year of international rugby. Voting is assessed on international Test performances only.”
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Feinberg-Mngomezulu made his Test debut in June 2024 against Wales – a date that pushed him just outside the one-year window required for eligibility in 2025.
Injury halted his early nomination bid last year and the award ultimately went to New Zealand’s Wallace Sititi.
This time around, the timing worked in favour of the new cohort of 2025 nominees: England flanker Henry Pollock, New Zealand lock Fabian Holland, Australia’s code-hopping Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii, and rising Bok backline star Ethan Hooker. All four debuted within the qualifying period. Feinberg-Mngomezulu did not.
Even Suaalii, who debuted a shade over a year ago, squeezed in via a quirk of the calendar – having earned his first cap just before last year’s awards cut-off.
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Still, none of this diminishes Feinberg-Mngomezulu’s meteoric rise. You don’t dominate a season the way he did by accident, nor break Percy Montgomery’s long-standing points record, unless you are operating at the very top tier of international rugby.
He may have missed out on the breakthrough shortlist. But at this rate, Feinberg-Mngomezulu’s next nomination is likely to be for something far bigger.
Photo: David Rogers/Getty Images
