Bok star crowned World Rugby Player of the Year
NEWS: Springbok hooker Malcolm Marx has been crowned World Rugby Men’s Player of the Year for 2025.
At the second time of asking and seven years after his first nomination, Marx joins two-time winner and fellow 2025 nominee Pieter-Steph du Toit, as well as Schalk Burger and Bryan Habana in an exclusive club of South African winners.
Marx has been a crucial cog in a dominant South Africa squad in 2025, starting 11 Tests this year to date, and scoring four tries in the Rugby Championship alone.
His second-half brace at the Allianz Stadium, Twickenham, in October, helped the Springboks come from behind against Argentina to claim back-to-back titles for the first time.
The other nominees for the award included fellow Springboks Ox Nche and Pieter-Steph du Toit, and France’s Louis Bielle-Biarrey.
The @Springboks‘ talisman 💫#WorldRugbyAwards pic.twitter.com/QjZEby39RH
— World Rugby (@WorldRugby) November 22, 2025
Meanwhile, All Black Fabian Holland has beaten Ethan Hooker, Henry Pollock and Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii for the Breakthrough Player of the Year award.
The Modest Dutch-born player insisted he’s “just the middle part” of a world-class line-out set-up who only “has to jump and catch the ball”, but the 23-year-old Highlander has made the step up to test rugby look much easier than jumping and catching.
He has rapidly become the go-to player at the line-out and has featured in 11 of New Zealand’s 12 internationals this year, only missing November’s loss to England with illness.
But it’s not just his undeniable aerial skills that have caught the eye. His work-rate and no-backward-step physicality quickly ensured his name is an early addition to the team sheet, and have made him the sixth All Black to be named Breakthrough Player of the Year, and, after Maro Itoje in 2016, the second lock to win the award.
The International Rugby Players Association Men’s 15s Try of the Year award went to Chile’s Santiago Pedrero for his score against Samoa in the South America/Pacific Play-off, RWC 2027 qualifier in September.
Team tries don’t come any better than the one scored by Pedrero. A pass off the deck suddenly ignited an attack that the Pacific Islanders seemed to have contained. One offload, then another, an inside pass, then back outside, allowed the second row to waltz to the line.
Take another look at the @IntRugbyPlayers Men’s 15s Try of the Year 🤩#WorldRugbyAwards pic.twitter.com/ztIG8mgObM
— World Rugby (@WorldRugby) November 22, 2025
