Flyhalf Libbok starting for upgraded Springboks against Pumas in title decider

MBOMBELA, South Africa (AP) — Flyhalf Manie Libbok will surprisingly start for South Africa when it tries to secure the Rugby Championship title against Argentina this weekend.

Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu and Handre Pollard have worn the 10 jersey for the Springboks through the championship. Pollard has dropped to the reserves and Feinberg-Mngomezulu has been stood down for a second straight test.

Libbok has appeared twice in the championship off the bench, including last Saturday when they suffered their first loss in the tournament to the Pumas, 29-28 in Santiago del Estero, where he missed a late penalty to win the match and title.

This year he has started just one test, against Portugal. Libbok was the No. 1 flyhalf for the Springboks at the Rugby World Cup a year ago, but he was pulled during the semifinal and wasn't picked for the final. Pollard led the Boks to the title, instead.

Coach Rassie Erasmus defended Libbok on Tuesday.

“Manie's general play is fantastic, and he brings a lot of energy and playmaking abilities to the backline,” Erasmus said. "He dictates play well, so we back Manie fully to do the job for us at flyhalf.

“It's not just up to him to find solutions for his goalkicking, it is something we have to do as a team, and we are working on a plan.”

What's more, Libbok will start for the first time with scrumhalf Jaden Hendrikse, who has also risen up the pecking order ahead of Cobus Reinach and Grant Williams, who featured in the two home wins over New Zealand.

Erasmus made 10 changes, one positional, for Saturday's last home test of the year.

Restored as starters were the likes of Cheslin Kolbe, Peter-Steph du Toit, captain Siya Kolisi and lock Eben Etzebeth, whose 128th test will eclipse Victor Matfield as the most capped Springbok.

Also back were front-rowers Bongi Mbonambi and Frans Malherbe, and center Damian de Allende. Kurt-Lee Arendse has swapped wings to accommodate Kolbe.

The Springboks are back to the same starting pack that defeated New Zealand 18-12 in Cape Town, and the same five forward replacements. They have gone back to a 5-3 bench with Reinach, Pollard and Lukhanyo Am covering the backline.

The Springboks need only a point to win their first title since 2019. Argentina can take a first title only with a bonus-point win that also denies South Africa a point.

“We planned to recall the players we rested last week because it allowed us to ensure that we have a group of core players who remained in the South African time zone and who would slot back into the team with ease,” Erasmus said.

"They will not only bring fresh legs and vast experience, it also allows us to select a settled team that played most of the matches (this year). The match-23 also includes 19 Rugby World Cup winners, while the other players have performed under immense pressure in the competition this season and they all deserve their places.

“It's going to be a massive challenge against an Argentina that has something special brewing in their set-up and who will give everything to win their first title in the competition, and we selected this team with that in mind.”

South Africa: Aphelele Fassi, Cheslin Kolbe, Jesse Kriel, Damian de Allende, Kurt-Lee Arendse, Manie Libbok, Jaden Hendrikse; Jasper Wiese, Peter-Steph du Toit, Siya Kolisi (captain), Ruan Nortje, Eben Etzebeth, Frans Malherbe, Bongi Mbonambi, Ox Nche. Reserves: Malcolm Marx, Gerhard Steenekamp, Vincent Koch, Elrigh Louw, Kwagga Smith, Cobus Reinach, Handre Pollard, Lukhanyo Am.

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South Africa players line up prior to a rugby championship test match against Argentina at Unico Madre de Ciudades stadium in Santiago del Estero, Argentina, Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Mateo Occhi)

Ivan and Peter Koubek’s father has just died, but neither seems willing to talk much about it, let alone to one another. After all, it’s not like the two brothers are even friends.

Peter, the eldest by a decade, pities his awkward, 22-year-old brother, a competitive chess player whose prowess for the game hasn’t done much to build his social skills or self-esteem. But after meeting Margaret, an older woman who’s emerging from the shadow of her own crisis, Ivan’s life has begun to blossom — and the same cannot be said for Peter. A human-rights lawyer — once optimistic, now jaded — Peter’s self-medicating and can’t stop sabotaging his relationships with Naomi, a wry, carefree college student, and Slyvia, his former flame and longtime love.

The days after tragedy are often hard to navigate and “Intermezzo,” the fourth novel from Irish author Sally Rooney, is a portrait of grief not fully internalized. In her astutely intimate style, Rooney wades through the convoluted emotions that follow tragedy: certainly heartache, but also relief and longing, guilt and joy, all on the cusp of transformation.

In sketching the contours of her characters, Rooney alternates between the perspectives as she did in her last novel, “Beautiful World, Where Are You.” Her dialogue, characteristically bare and without quotation marks, lends a distinct musicality to her prose.

As Peter’s mind becomes untethered by pills, Rooney’s close third-person voice dances over the line of spoken and unspoken, slurring together in long, drawn-out paragraphs as he wanders the streets of Dublin — meandering sentences broken by sharp staccatos of self-pity.

Ivan meanwhile, follows the well-trod path of other stunted men, intelligently methodical yet rambling, grasping at emotions with insufficient words. These instances of almost are where Rooney shines. She teases out near-ruptured emotions never fully felt by the conscience, untethering them from reality for our voyeuristic pleasure.

When Ivan first meets Margaret, Rooney notes that he has “an involuntary mental image of kissing her on the mouth: not even really an image, but an idea of an image, sort of a realization that it will be possible to visualize this at some later point.”

Margaret herself is struck by the uncanny sense that “life has slipped free of its netting” following her first encounter with Ivan. “It means nothing,” she thinks, then quickly course corrects. “That isn’t true: it means something, but the meaning is unfamiliar.”

This is often the meter of metamorphosis, the mundane swirl of emotions flirt past, illegible and unrealized until they inevitably burst, fully formed and so wholly overwhelming that they cannot be contained. And it is at this in-between, restrained and circumspect, where Rooney situates her novel — consider the title.

Intermezzo, an unexpected move in chess that interrupts the typical sequence of exchanges, is a risk that upends the game’s perceived balance, raising the stakes.

In the tense, messy contradictions of communal grief, Rooney weaves together beautiful whole cloth.

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This cover image released by FSG shows "Intermezzo" by Sally Rooney. (FSG via AP)