Comment by Mike Greenaway
SA Rugby opened the nomination process earlier this week to decide the local Player of the Year, whom they will honour when the new year rolls around.
A glittering awards ceremony earlier this year selected Eben Etzebeth as the best men’s player in South Africa, the 33-year-old becoming only the second player to win the accolade back-to-back.
The awards will not just celebrate the men’s best player, but also the women’s player, along a handful of other important categories.
The Bok Women have grown enormously over the last year; while the stars of the Under-21 Boks, had a troubled but promising year; while their were stand-out players in a Blitzboks team that lost their way before finishing wonderfully with a series win in Cape Town last week, and by also winning bronze at the Paris Olympics.
It will be most intriguing, however, to see who the judges rule as the best male player of 2024, because there were several individuals who shined with consistent and significant performances.
The World Rugby judges picked Pieter-Steph du Toit, Cheslin Kolbe and Eben Etzebeth in a finalist list that was completed by Irishman Caelan Doris last month.
This was World Rugby’s biggest nod to the Springboks’ success in history. The South Africans are not a popular team in the northern hemisphere and even unbiased Bok supporters — if there is such a person — would have cringed if the Springboks were overlooked.
Only Du Toit (2019), Schalk Burger (2004) and Bryan Habana (2007) have won the award, but in 2024, World Rugby would have been shot down in flames if they had capped their snub of Rassie Erasmus in the Coach of the Year category by picking Doris over the three South Africans.
Those judges would have been thrown into the Seine by the Boks, but the big question now is, who will South Africa pick as their Player of the Year?
Du Toit was consistently magnificent in a year in which the Boks won 12 of their 14 games. Kolbe came to light in the second half of the year with some dazzling performances.
But this Durban reporter is going to stick his neck out and say that Etzebeth was the best Bok in 2024.
When Du Toit won the World Rugby Player of the Award a month ago, no South African argued against it, but if it had been Etzebeth, there would have been no quibble either.
Etzebeth, Kolbe or Du Toit for SA Player of the Year? They all deserve it, but I am putting my money on Etzebeth to win a treble of consecutive SA Rugby awards.