Nché was the first prop ever shortlisted for the award last November and lost it to Malcolm Marx. On For The Love Of Rugby on Sunday, a 118-cap England tighthead restarted the campaign, and his co-host put Jordie Barrett on the same list.
“We are on a campaign for a prop to win Player of the Year, and the Ox once again, mate, was just doing things.”
Dan Cole, 118 England caps at tighthead, said it on For The Love Of Rugby on Sunday 13 September, the morning after Ox Nché’s 52nd Test. The campaign has one problem that no argument fixes. The World Rugby Men’s 15s Player of the Year has been awarded 24 times since 2001, and a prop has never won it. Until last November, a prop had never been shortlisted.
The count by position is below, with the two hookers who did win it and the three who were nominated and lost. So is the reason the campaign is harder this week than it was after Soweto, where Nché told the referee he wanted the scrum and got it. And the second name Ben Youngs put on the list.
Twenty-four awards, seven fly-halves, no props
| Position | Awards | Winners |
|---|---|---|
| Fly-half | 7 | Jonny Wilkinson 2003; Dan Carter 2005, 2012, 2015; Beauden Barrett 2016, 2017; Johnny Sexton 2018 |
| Flanker | 8 | Schalk Burger 2004; Richie McCaw 2006, 2009, 2010; Thierry Dusautoir 2011; Pieter-Steph du Toit 2019, 2024; Josh van der Flier 2022 |
| Hooker | 2 | Keith Wood 2001; Malcolm Marx 2025 |
| Scrum-half | 2 | Fabien Galthié 2002; Antoine Dupont 2021 |
| Number 8 | 2 | Kieran Read 2013; Ardie Savea 2023 |
| Wing | 2 | Bryan Habana 2007; Shane Williams 2008 |
| Lock | 1 | Brodie Retallick 2014 |
| Prop | 0 |
Source: World Rugby awards archive, 2001 to 2025. No award was made in 2020.
Fifteen of the 24 went to a fly-half or a flanker. Hookers have two: Keith Wood in the first year and Marx last November. Three more hookers made the shortlist and lost, Steve Thompson in 2003, Dane Coles in 2016 and Joe Taufete’e in 2019. No prop had been nominated at all until Nché’s name appeared on the 2025 list beside Louis Bielle-Biarrey, Pieter-Steph du Toit and Marx. He was named at loosehead in the Dream Team of the Year three days after Marx took the individual award.
Nché’s own reading of the nomination, given to the Sharks’ website afterwards, is the loosehead’s problem in one line: “Come scrum time, I can’t scrum alone. I need the whole pack, I need everyone to buy in.”
What Cole is counting, and what the panel sees
“We are on a campaign for a prop to win Player of the Year, and the Ox once again, mate, was just doing things: carrying, scrummaging, mauling, tackling, counter-rucking, hitting rucks, carrying. I’ve probably already said carried … No nine? No problems. Ox has got you.”
None of the seven things on Cole’s list makes a highlights package. The award’s history says what does. The man who beat him to it has 28 Test tries. Nché has none in 52. Every winner since Brodie Retallick in 2014 has been a player the camera follows, and Marx is the first in more than a decade whose best work happens at a set piece. He still had four tries in last year’s Rugby Championship.
What a prop wins instead is penalties, and even those are shared. Kyle Sinckler’s read of the Springboks scrum, from a former England tighthead, is that it is won before the ball goes in, by eight men, which is Nché’s own point about not scrumming alone. A panel looking for one name at a scrum finds eight.
Read also: why the Springboks scrum remains South Africa’s key Test advantage, the page this whole argument sits under.
Baltimore was not the Soweto weapon
Which is the campaign’s problem this week. Cole said “once again”, and the series backs him. Saturday, on its own, does not.
Nché got a 7 in the site’s Springboks ratings from Baltimore. He made ground in the first minute and hit Peter Lakai hard enough on 7 for Ruan Nortjé to get over the ball. Thirteen tackles in the first half. Then the scrum. The first went sideways on 12 and held, one was ruled unplayable on 15 for a free-kick, and Fletcher Newell won a penalty against him before half-time, the one scrum call New Zealand’s starting front row got that night.
A week earlier in Soweto he had asked for the scrum and won it. In Baltimore the pack won the match somewhere else, and the loosehead’s best work was the tackle count. Shortlists tend to remember the last thing they saw, and the last thing they saw was a 7.
Ben Youngs has a second name: Jordie Barrett
Youngs, 127 England caps at scrum-half, backed the campaign and then widened it.
“I talk about Ox for World Player of the Year; Jordie Barrett, I’m going to say, deserves to be on that shortlist. He has been phenomenal throughout this entire series. Just dirty work. It’s not always perfect, but you watch everything good New Zealand do, it sort of comes through Jordie Barrett … Will Jordan gets a lot of credit, and should do, rightfully, for his ability to finish tries, but he’s smart in the fact that: just run around, hang around Jordie Barrett, and good things will happen.”
Cole agreed. “He’s the best, I’d say the glue of that Kiwi backline and the best player in that team,” he said. “He’s stood up, hasn’t he, against what [is] a fantastic, proven partnership in, of course, de Allende and Jesse Kriel.”
The site has heard the case before. Bryn Hall, the former Crusaders scrum-half, calls him the best player in the world and would lose Cam Roigard before him. Damian de Allende named him, not Ma’a Nonu, as the centre who stands out. He made 15 tackles and five turnovers at Ellis Park in the one Test New Zealand won.
Barrett’s case is Nché’s case, dirty work, with one difference. A centre’s dirty work happens in the open, with a try at the end of it often enough for a panel to count. A prop’s happens under a pile, and the count belongs to somebody else.
The shortlist lands in November
Ox Nché, the short version
- Born 23 July 1995 in Bloemfontein. 1.76m and 122kg.
- Springboks debut on 2 June 2018 against Wales in Washington DC, a 22-20 defeat.
- Cheetahs until 2019, Sharks since 2020. Challenge Cup winner in 2024.
- World Cup winner in 2023. Rugby Championship winner in 2024 and 2025.
- 52 Tests, no tries. First prop ever shortlisted for World Player of the Year.
Last year’s shortlist was announced on Tuesday 18 November and the winner named four days later. If the calendar holds, the Springboks will have played Italy and France in the Nations Championship by then, with Ireland on Saturday 21 November still to come. Cole’s campaign has two Tests, perhaps three, to move a 24-year record, and the man it is for has already said the one thing a prop cannot do is win a scrum alone.
Read next:
– The series Cole’s “once again” refers to: 3-1, and nine All Blacks home injured before the end of it.
– What Trevor Nyakane says about the hooker who beat Nché to the award. The nicest man on the bus, and the one who plays.
Frequently asked
Has a prop ever won World Rugby Player of the Year?
No. The men’s 15s award has been given 24 times since 2001 and the only front-rowers to win it are hookers, Keith Wood in 2001 and Malcolm Marx in 2025. Ox Nché became the first prop ever nominated in November 2025.
Who won World Rugby Men’s Player of the Year in 2025?
Malcolm Marx, the Springboks hooker, from a shortlist of Louis Bielle-Biarrey, Pieter-Steph du Toit, Nché and himself. Nché was named at loosehead in the Dream Team of the Year.
How many caps does Ox Nché have?
Baltimore on Saturday 12 September was his 52nd Test. He debuted against Wales in Washington DC in June 2018 and has yet to score a Test try.
Your turn: Ox Nché or Jordie Barrett?
Two campaigns from the same show. Either the award finally counts what a loosehead does under the pile, and Nché’s series is enough to break a 24-year pattern, or Barrett’s dirty work in the open is the same case with better evidence, and the first prop to win it will not be this one. Which name goes first on the shortlist? Settle it below.
