{"id":149258,"date":"2025-11-23T06:40:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T06:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/149258\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T06:40:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T06:40:08","slug":"marxs-reaction-after-becoming-fourth-springbok-to-win-world-rugby-honour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/149258\/","title":{"rendered":"Marx\u2019s reaction after becoming fourth Springbok to win World Rugby honour"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Two-time World Cup winner Malcolm Marx<\/a> has become just the fourth Springbok to be named World Rugby Player of the Year, with the front-rower dedicating the prestigious honour to his teammates and South Africa.<\/p>\n

World Rugby announced the recipients of Player of the Year and Breakthrough Player of the Year on Saturday evening. All Blacks<\/a> lock Fabian Holland<\/a> took out the other award, selected ahead of finalists Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii<\/a>, Henry Pollock<\/a> and Ethan Hooker.<\/p>\n

Marx received the top individual honour in men\u2019s rugby ahead of fellow Springboks Ox Nche<\/a> and Pieter-Steph du Toit<\/a>, and France\u2019s Louise Bielle-Biarrey. Du Toit was looking to join Dan Carter and Richie McCaw<\/a> as the only three-time winners of the award.<\/p>\n

The Springboks enforcer has become the first hooker since Ireland\u2019s Keith Wood<\/a> in 2001 to be crowned the Player of the Year. Marx has started in all of his 11 Test appearances this season, scoring five tries throughout The Rugby Championship.<\/p>\n

Marx played at least 70 minutes in TRC wins over the Wallabies and Los Pumas, before another massive shift against France<\/a> during the Quilter Nations Series. The hooker has joined countrymen du Toit, Bryan Habana<\/a> and Schalk Burger<\/a> as the only Boks to have won the award.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s really sunk in to be honest,\u201d Marx told reporters.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be fair, none of this is achieved without the team environment we have, without the management, without the players.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are a tight-knit group and things like this happen when you have a group that we have.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my opinion this isn\u2019t just for me an individual award, I think it\u2019s more a team award because the support and the structures that we have for guys to express themselves is unbelievable.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just for me, it\u2019s for our team, it\u2019s for South Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n

South Africa<\/a> brought a 13-year Dublin drought to an end with a win over Ireland<\/a> at the Aviva Stadium. Damian Willemse<\/a> opened the scoring inside the first few minutes, before Ireland lock James Ryan<\/a> was shown a red card midway through the first term.<\/p>\n

Sam Prendergast was later sent to the sin bin. The Boks extended their advantage through dynamic scrum-half Cobus Reinach<\/a>, before a penalty try just before the break saw the visitors take a 19-7 lead into the sheds.<\/p>\n

Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu crossed for the only try of the second half, as the Boks held on for a historic win in Dublin. South Africa still have one more match to play in 2025, taking on Wales<\/a> in Cardiff next weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was obviously a tough game,\u201d Marx said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know what a quality side they are and what a quality pack they have.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew it was going to be tough so we obviously had to grind it out and try and put as much pressure as we could throughout the game, to try and get reward from it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought they did extremely well in the second half where they held us out. We had a few penalties and all of that. They\u2019re a quality side, I think tonight they showed that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two-time World Cup winner Malcolm Marx has become just the fourth Springbok to be named World Rugby Player…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149259,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-149258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}