Stormers coach John Dobson admits it was “impossible” to keep both Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu and Manie Libbok on the books in Cape Town.
Feinberg-Mngomezulu has emerged as the Springboks’ first-choice No 10 this season, highlighted by his record-breaking 37-point performance against Argentina in Durban last Saturday.
Libbok, who sparked the Stormers’ Vodacom URC title run in 2021-22 and their march to the 2022-23 final, has also made his mark at Test level but will continue his career in Japan with the Kintetsu Liners.
Dobson said the decision to let Libbok leave was unavoidable.
“We did get some criticism, and I understand that,” the coach explained. “Naas Botha made the point that three of the best flyhalves in the world are in South Africa in [Handré] Pollard, Feinberg-Mngomezulu and Libbok. The thing is, two of them were at one franchise, which is absolutely impossible from our side, as much as one of them can be injured at any given moment.”
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Balancing both talents, he added, was never sustainable.
“Sacha absolutely wants to play No 10, and there is no way you can justify your second flyhalf being a world-class flyhalf,” Dobson said. “There is no organisation in the world who can afford that and, secondly, the players want that security.
“You need a guy who is happy to be No 2 and step up when we need him, which is going to be half our games. That’s why we’ve got Jurie [Mathee].
“We didn’t want to get rid of Manie and would have loved to keep him, but it made no sense for him or Sacha, and he had the opportunity to change his life in terms of the amount of money he was offered in Japan.”
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Dobson is philosophical about the outcome.
“It wasn’t great, but I don’t think any club in the world could have handled it differently, even if you had kept Manie,” he said. “Is Sacha going to be happy at 12 or 15? No. Is he going to be happy on the bench? No. We can rotate them as much as we want, but when you get to a crunch playoff game, you’re going to have to choose one of them and the other is going to know he is No 2, which impacts his international chances and his earning ability overseas.
“I would have loved to have both of them, but the good news is that we have both of them with the Springboks, and I don’t see a time where they both aren’t Springboks.”
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Photo: Grant Pitcher/Gallo Images
The post Dobbo: We didn’t want to get rid of Manie appeared first on SA Rugby magazine.
