Caelan Doris is the only Irish player in the 10-strong list of nominees for the Investec Champions Cup Player of the Year nominees.<\/p>\n
Back-rower Doris led Leinster to four pool victories and top spot in Pool 3, securing a third seed spot for the last-16 round. They will host 14th seeds Edinburgh on the first weekend of April.<\/p>\n
Champions Bordeaux, who were rampant in the pool phase, have two players among the nominees, wing Louis Bielle-Biarrey and out-half Matthieu Jalibert.<\/p>\n
Premiership winners Bath are the only other side to boast two shortlisted players, with out-half Finn Russell and number eight Alfie Barbeary selected.<\/p>\n
The remaining five nominees are Thomas Ramos (Toulouse) Jack Dempsey (Glasgow Warriors), Tom Willis (Saracens), George Hendy (Northampton Saints) and Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu (DHL Stormers)<\/p>\n
The list was drawn up by a panel of ex-players and broadcasters following the conclusion of the pool phase, with public voting open until the end of the quarter-finals in April.<\/p>\n
The list will be whittled down to five by a combination of judges and public vote, with the winner announced after the final in Bilbao on 23 May. The winner is awarded the Anthony Foley Memorial Trophy.<\/p>\n
Four Irish players have previously won the award: Ronan O’Gara (2010), Sean O’Brien (2011), Rob Kearney (2012) and Josh van der Flier (2022).<\/p>\n
2026 Investec Player of the Year nominees<\/p>\n
Alfie Barbeary (Bath)
Louis Bielle-Biarrey (Bordeaux Begles)
Jack Dempsey (Glasgow Warriors)
Caelan Doris (Leinster)
Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu (DHL Stormers)
George Hendy (Northampton Saints)
Matthieu Jalibert (Bordeaux Begles)
Thomas Ramos (Toulouse)
Finn Russell (Bath)
Tom Willis (Saracens)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Caelan Doris is the only Irish player in the 10-strong list of nominees for the Investec Champions Cup…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256040,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-256039","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}