Malcolm Marx Has 28 Test Tries. John Smit Has Eight.

John Smit won 111 caps for South Africa and scored eight tries. Malcolm Marx, the reigning World Rugby Player of the Year, has 92 caps and 28.

Smit conceded it on a podcast this week without mentioning a single number. Which of them would you rather have had in your side? The comments are open.

“There’s a couple of things about Malcolm that make him the best in the world. Certainly the best that’s worn the number two shirt in South Africa, and I say that quite respectfully and quite gladly.”

Respectfully and gladly. A man handing over a jersey he wore in a World Cup final, on air, without being asked to.

Smit captained South Africa 83 times and lifted the World Cup in 2007. He also co-hosts “I Love Rugby” with George Gregan, so he gave the jersey away on his own show, to a visiting Scot, in the episode published on Tuesday 8 September, four days after the 29-24 win that put South Africa 2-1 up.

Four things Smit said. Each one survives being checked.

“Certainly the best that’s worn the number two shirt”

The 66th-minute maul try at FNB Stadium was Marx’s 28th in a Springboks jersey. Put that on South Africa’s all-time list and the company is not what you expect from a hooker.

Springboks all-time try scorers, from bokhist.com, correct to 10 September 2026.

Four wings and a scrum-half, and then a hooker. The next forwards down the list are Schalk Burger and Juan Smith on 12, Mark Andrews on 11, Eben Etzebeth on nine. Smit himself is on eight, from 111 Tests.

The caps column is where Smit stops losing. Marx sits 13th on the all-time Springboks list on 92. Smit is fifth on 111. No other hooker is close: Bongi Mbonambi 82, Bismarck du Plessis 79.

So Smit is nineteen Tests ahead. Marx is twenty tries ahead. The fourth Test is at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore on Saturday 12 September, and a win or a draw takes the series. It is also cap 93. Not a milestone. But only one hooker in South African history has pulled that jersey on more often.

There is a wider version of the claim, and it also holds. When Marx was named World Rugby Men’s 15s Player of the Year last November, he became the first hooker to win it since Keith Wood took the inaugural award in 2001. Twenty-four years between front-row winners. Mark Alexander, the president of SA Rugby, put it in character terms in the union’s statement at the time.

“His work ethic is simply unbelievable and he embodies everything we value in a Springbok – resilience, commitment and character.”

“There’s no real chinks in the armour”

Smit was asked why. He did not reach for one word.

“He’s a beast. He’s a monstrous man. He’s a big guy. He’s athletic. He’s fast. He carries well. He steals. He scrums. He’s got an unbelievable throw. There’s no real chinks in the armour.”

Throw, scrum, carry, steal. Four separate jobs, and a hooker trusted with two of them keeps his shirt. Kieran Read says the Springboks squeeze the hooker, not the prop, which makes the number two the man who decides whether a scrum holds. Marx does that one and then goes and does the other three.

The carrying and the stealing get the highlights. The throw is the one that decides selection, and Rassie Erasmus has already shown what he thinks of it: Deon Fourie started the Cape Town Test after the front-row switch and Marx came off the bench, and by Soweto he was back.

Then there is the part of the maul try nobody noticed at full speed. Planet Rugby’s James While pointed out that Marx did not simply ride the drive over the line. He steered it from near the touchline to under the posts, which turned a wide conversion into a formality. Two points, from a hooker’s sense of where the ball needed to end up.

The turnovers Malcolm Marx walked away from

Smit spent longer on the turnovers Marx did not go for than on the one he did.

Marx won one turnover penalty in Soweto, on 61 minutes, after Pieter-Steph du Toit made the tackle. It changed the last quarter. What Smit noticed was how many times Marx, Deon Fourie and Jasper Wiese looked at a ruck and decided not to go.

“The All Blacks have been unbelievably efficient in cleaning their ball, and they need to be really good at the breakdown on their ball to be able to allow that speed of play… were really difficult to pick those moments against a team like the All Blacks, because they’re so tidy at breakdown.”

The decision gets made in the half-second while the tackle is still landing. Get it wrong and it costs more than getting it right pays.

“You can’t overcommit, because once you make a wrong decision, you’re a man down against an attack that’s wanting to go wide, especially with a rush defence.”

A rush defence works by arriving as a wall. One forward who has stopped to jackal is not in the wall, and against a side that moves the ball to the edge as fast as New Zealand do, the hole he leaves is two passes from a winger.

He looked at rucks all evening and walked past nearly all of them. The one he backed himself over changed the last quarter. That read will not show up on anyone’s stat sheet on Saturday either.

The men who have to arrive at those rucks know the arithmetic. Stephen Donald won a World Cup for the All Blacks in 2011, and reviewing Soweto on The Aftermatch, in remarks SA Rugby magazine reported on Monday 7 September, he turned to Marx’s work at the breakdown.

“You’re not going to shift him if you’re not there early. Once he gets locked on the ball, it’s all over.”

Donald had seen it coming. Four days before the Test, asked on the same show which Springboks the All Blacks had to shut down, he named Eben Etzebeth and then added one more.

“[Malcolm] Marx is a problem too, particularly at the breakdown – he is so strong over the ball.”

Flagged on the Wednesday, phenomenal by the Monday.

Read also: the platform he plays off, and why it has outlasted three law cycles of people trying to legislate it away: why the Springboks scrum remains South Africa’s key Test advantage.

“He’s a better human being than he is a rugby player”

Twice in the segment, Smit stopped talking about rugby.

“He’s a better human being than he is a rugby player. He’s just such a good guy. He’s good for the team. He’s the kind of guy that gets in there and serves. He’s serving the guys all the time.”

Teammates always say that, which is why it is worth hearing it from people who do not share a dressing room with him. Donald’s co-host, the New Zealand sportscaster Kirstie Stanway, went at the same thing from a different direction.

“It wasn’t just what he was doing around the field. It’s the swagger that Malcolm Marx has got about him.”

Victor Matfield won 127 caps, second only to Etzebeth among Springboks forwards. Talking to the former All Blacks wing John Kirwan on the Rugby Rivals podcast, in remarks reported by Kick Off, he was not talking about Soweto at all. He was reaching back to Cape Town, where he thought the award “could have been” Marx’s, in a three-way call between Marx, Etzebeth and Cheslin Kolbe.

“I think he’s special every week… He leads that scrum, he gets over the ball, carries. So no, he’s just unbelievable.”

Two Tests, two cases for the same man. His own dressing room says it in a different register: Trevor Nyakane and Steven Kitshoff have described the flicker that turns the nicest bloke on the bus into the one nobody wants to meet at a ruck.

“The bane of existence for every opposition team”

Then this, unprompted.

“He must be the bane of existence for every opposition team that play against him. But I don’t think there’s one person in world rugby [who] doesn’t like him as a human afterwards, that can’t wait to have a beer with him.”

Nobody says that about a man they have to pack down against twice a year unless it is true.

Jim Hamilton, 63 Tests for Scotland in the second row, went past the try and the turnover and straight to a gesture.

“When he gets the turnover and he just points at Luke Jacobson who’s come in to clear him out, and he has hit him hard, and Malcolm Marx hasn’t flinched. He just points [at] him.”

Jacobson has since been sent home injured along with Ardie Savea and Quinn Tupaea, and Ardie Savea is not travelling to Baltimore either. New Zealand field a different back row on Saturday.

The columnist Mark Keohane put the whole argument in two sentences this week, and they are harder to argue with than Smit’s, because Keohane owes him nothing.

“Marx is not simply the best hooker in the world. There is Marx, and then there is a group fighting to be ranked second.”

Marx took an 8.5 in the player ratings, and did not take the medal. The official award on the night went to Ethan Hooker. New Zealand have outscored South Africa across the series and still trail it 2-1.

Frequently asked

How many Test tries has Malcolm Marx scored?
Twenty-eight, from 92 Tests, after the maul try against New Zealand at FNB Stadium on 5 September. That places him fifth on South Africa’s all-time list behind Bryan Habana, Joost van der Westhuizen, Makazole Mapimpi and Jaque Fourie.

Is Malcolm Marx the highest try-scoring forward in Springboks history?
By a distance. The next forwards on the list are Schalk Burger and Juan Smith on 12, then Mark Andrews on 11 and Eben Etzebeth on nine.

How many caps does Malcolm Marx have?
Ninety-two going into the Baltimore Test, which makes him the second most-capped Springboks hooker behind John Smit on 111.

What did John Smit say about Malcolm Marx?
That a couple of things “make him the best in the world”, and that he is “certainly the best that’s worn the number two shirt in South Africa”. Smit, who won 111 caps and captained the 2007 World Cup-winning side, said it “quite respectfully and quite gladly” on the “I Love Rugby” podcast on 8 September 2026.

Read next: Marx packs down on Saturday for a series South Africa have not won against New Zealand since 1976, and the man beside him has his own reason for wanting it: Eben Etzebeth on the Baltimore decider.

Your turn

Smit gave the jersey away on air. There is a counter-argument and it is not a silly one: Smit captained a World Cup-winning side, Bismarck du Plessis was more destructive on his day, and 28 tries owe something to a Springboks maul that would score with a traffic cone at the back of it.

So name the hooker who beats him, and say which of Smit’s four jobs he does better.