South Africa flyhalf Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu is refuting the perception that he's arrogant, saying that he has a competitive streak that comes from his family history and playing sport with his older brother and friends.
Although he attended Bishops Diocesan College, one of the most prestigious schools in South Africa, and comes from a famous family, he told ESPN that the story of his upbringing is more nuanced than the public is aware of.
Feinberg-Mngomezulu, who is of Jewish and Zulu heritage, told ESPN: "The one thing that always comes up is that I can act like I'm too big for my boots on the field or that I show a bit too much chest or try be too dominant or overly-confident.
"If people understood that I come from a family of fighters and that I never grew up super privileged... if people just understood where I come from -- they would understand that that gorilla-pumping and hitting his chest with his fists -- that's kind of how I've just grown up and that's my competitive edge.
"I would never want my supporters to be misguided by that or interpret me differently to what I am. Off the field; I think I'm a good person. I'm fairly humble; I'm fairly nice to people - but when I'm on the field, I turn into another beast. I would never want that to cross over with who I am.
"I've been competitive because I've played sport with my brother and his friends [who] were five years older than me from a young age. I've always had to play with ages above me and try to prove myself. I've always wanted to prove myself.
"When we played cricket in our neighbourhood, or rugby, if I wasn't good enough to be part of the games, I didn't play, so there's always been this essence within me to just be good enough and fight to play and play well."
Rugby vs. Football
Feinberg-Mngomezulu understands all too well that while he may feel misunderstood, it comes with the territory and that others in the public eye have had it worse. He credited a meeting last year with Arsenal legend Ian Wright for this insight.
His father, the journalist Nick Feinberg, posted a photo of him with Wright in October 2025 on X.
"With Ian; he was just describing to us the way that the game has progressed and the pressures that he felt as a young man with the era of racism going on," Feinberg-Mngomezulu said.
"He didn't give me any straight advice, but I took a lot from the conversation in the sense that he was playing with insane pressures back then," Feinberg-Mngomezulu continued.
The flyhalf, who is the grandson of anti-apartheid activist Barry Feinberg, revealed that the description Wright gave of the racism he faced in a career which spanned from 1985-2000 went beyond anything he himself had faced in rugby.
"You can talk about what pressure is - it changes from individual to individual - but I think the pressure of winning or losing a game compared to the pressure of being racially abused in a game because you don't perform is two different pressures and it gave me a good spectrum of what pressure really is," added Feinberg-Mngomezulu.
"It was eye-opening to really understand. It was close to his heart - that subject - about what was going on back in his day. It was just interesting to understand that when he was playing, what he was experiencing was 5 or 10 times harder than what I'm experiencing, so who am I to feel under pressure?"
Feinberg-Mngomezulu has met several elite footballers, including Arsenal's Myles Lewis-Skelly and an array of players at Chelsea, who are his favourite team despite his admiration for Gunners and Crystal Palace icon Wright.
Despite growing up as a supporter of Chelsea and several icons across multiple sports, Feinberg-Mngomezulu has felt from a young age that rugby union was the one which allowed him to best combine lessons from all of them to express his athletic gifts.
"I started getting into rugby probably at about 11 or 12. That's when you put on boots for the first time at school. You go from playing barefoot to putting on boots. Then, it starts getting a bit more serious slowly," Feinberg-Mngomezulu said.
"Obviously, the school I was at in the southern suburbs (Bishops in Cape Town) was rugby-obsessed, so that kind of pushed me towards the sport.
"'Why rugby?' I think rugby is a nice blend of a lot of sports. You could say you have the fielding aspect of cricket, the kicking aspect of football - within kicking, the timing and processes required relate to golf - so it's a whole concoction of sports in one.
"Obviously, it's topped off by the ability to be physically present, which I love. As a competitive sportsman, I feel like rugby is the easiest way to let that competitiveness loose, because there are so many areas of the game which require heart and fight and you can always be involved."
He contrasted the freedom rugby allows with football - a sport which, despite his passion for it, he feels relies on more rigid structures than his own and offers fewer opportunities to run straight towards the heart of the action.
He said of football: "Say you're on one side of the field for half the game and you're not getting any ball. If you're going to run back to defend or you're going to make a run forward, you're going to be out of system and cause a gap for the next transition or something like that.
"Rugby allows that full competitive side of us to come out and that's why I probably chose that."
A changing Springboks narrative
Feinberg-Mngomezulu may face perceptions from the public at times which do not quite square with his image of himself. However, due to his enterprising, creative style of play, he certainly cannot be lumped in with even the harshest perceptions of the Springboks from critics as a team that 'wins ugly'.
As a result, he carries unique power to add a different dimension to narratives of the team: "In the era we are going into via social media and all of that; I feel like I can capture a lot of other demographics overseas and I feel like that's a strong point of mine.
"Via that, bettering the Springboks' name overseas would be a byproduct of that. Maybe it's just my age and the Gen Z era I'm coming from that makes me very relatable to overseas spectators and especially the young ones that are on social media a lot.
"I guess that's where the perception would filter through from - maybe that social media fanbase filtering into crowds and viewers. Maybe via the new age, I can help push the Springboks brand forward because there seems to be something that people enjoy about me. I don't know what it is - maybe it's the new era vibes."
Feinberg-Mngomezulu -- who in December signed a contract extension until 2029 with the Cape Town-based Stormers -- has returned to the Springboks side after an injury layoff of just over two months.
He started a 17-10 win over Argentina two weeks ago and retained his place for the opening Test of the Rugby's Greatest Rivalry (RGR) against New Zealand on Saturday at Ellis Park.
Feinberg-Mngomezulu is represented by sports & entertainment marketing agency EMW Global, whose client list includes Chelsea legends Olivier Giroud and Petr Čech, as well as Javier Zanetti, Michael Owen and pole vault star Juliana Campos.
Their CEO and founder, Michael Rocha-Keys, expressed confidence that Feinberg-Mngomezulu could continue to grow his career: "Sacha is a promising talent and we want to support him to achieve his goals off the field while he prioritises his performances on the field.
"We linked him up with Chelsea and Arsenal players [in 2025], rubbing shoulders with other stars in other sports is invaluable, interacting and sharing experiences with like-minded professional sportsmen and global superstars will only give him the platform to continue raising the bar."