<\/p>\n
\nFabian Holland becomes the sixth Kiwi to win World Rugby’s Breakthrough Player of the Year award.
\nPhoto: www.photosport.nz\n<\/p>\n
Towering All Blacks lock Fabian Holland has capped a stellar debut season by being named World Rugby’s Breakthrough Player of the Year for 2025.<\/p>\n
The 23-year-old Highlander played his first test in July against France, with his aerial skills catching the eye of the selectors.<\/p>\n
In making his step-up to the world stage, the modest Dutch-born lock has insisted he’s “just the middle part” of the lineout.<\/p>\n
He featured in 11 of New Zealand’s 12 internationals this season, rapidly becoming the go-to player in the set-piece.<\/p>\n
In fact, the only game he missed was the All Blacks’ recent loss to England, due to illness.<\/p>\n
His workrate and no-backward-step physicality quickly ensured his place in the team.<\/p>\n
Holland relocated from Amsterdam to Christchurch at the age of 16 to attend Christchurch Boys’ High School.<\/p>\n
He progressed rapidly from the First XV to the New Zealand U20s, before making his provincial debut for Otago in 2021.<\/p>\n
In 2023, Holland impressed for the All Blacks XV, producing a standout man-of-the-match performance against Munster in Ireland.<\/p>\n
Holland is the sixth All Black to be named Breakthrough Player of the Year, following in the footsteps of teammate Wallace Sititi, who took home the award last year.<\/p>\n
South Africa hooker Malcolm Marx was named World Rugby Men’s 15s Player of the Year, the fourth Springbok to claim the individual award – seven years after he was first nominated.<\/p>\n
Marx took the award ahead of Springbok teammates Pieter-Steph du Toit, twice a winner, and Ox Nch\u00e9, as well as French winger Louis Bielle-Biarrey.<\/p>\n
Nch\u00e9 hoped to become the first prop to win the prize and had a strong case.<\/p>\n
Marx joined Du Toit (2019 & 2024), Bryan Habana (2007) and Schalk Burger (2004) as South African recipients of the award.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think it’s really sunk in to be honest,” Marx said, after a player-of-the-match display against Ireland. “To be fair, none of this is achieved without the team environment we have, without the management, without the players.<\/p>\n
“We are tightknit group and things like this happen, when you have a group that we have. In my opinion, this isn’t for me just an individual award – I think it’s more a team award, because the support and the structures that we have for guys to express themselves is unbelievable.”<\/p>\n
– Reuters\/RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fabian Holland becomes the sixth Kiwi to win World Rugby’s Breakthrough Player of the Year award. Photo: www.photosport.nz…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148982,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-149546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149546","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=149546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}