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Impressive quartet shortlisted for prestigious Player of the Year award
By PA
England forward Ben Earl, Ireland centre Bundee Aki, Scotland wing Duhan van der Merwe and Italy centre Tommaso Menoncello are in the running to be named Six Nations player of the year.
The quartet have been shortlisted for the individual award, having been selected by the greatest number of people in the fan vote for the Guinness Team of the Championship.
Number eight Earl made the most carries in the 2024 Championship, with his total of 73 the third most by an England player in the competition behind Billy Vunipola (93) in 2016 and Ben Cohen (76) in 2002.
Aki’s total of 144 metres in contact – the best of any player in the Championship – helped Ireland to a second successive Six Nations title.
Van der Merwe finished the campaign as joint-top try scorer, alongside Ireland hooker Dan Sheehan, with five, while Menoncello made the most dominant tackles (eight) in the tournament.
Voting for the winner continues on the Six Nations website until 11pm GMT on Sunday, March 24.
You can also still pick your Greatest Six Nations XV of all time below.
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After a fairly simple Pac4, the BFs will find out a lot about themselves in September when they face the rampaging RedRoses at Twickenham in front of a record crowd. After that they will face them again in Canada in WXV1. They also have France to contend with. Will be interesting to see what Australia have to offer with Jo Yapp at the helm.
Go to commentsSuper Rugby Pacific has been better as a spectacle due to the emphasis on speeding the game up and I’d look at taking things a step further. Instead of giving teams 90 seconds to take a conversion, let’s bring that down 60 seconds. You could also look at allowing 45 seconds for a penalty goal. Maybe teams could get 20 seconds instead of 30 to form a scrum before the ref then starts the engagement process. However, this year the most pleasing change is the added competitiveness in the Trans Tasman matches. What does frustrate me is how the rugby media in Australasia allow the the whole ‘‘rugby is boring’’/’’rugby yawnion’’ narrative to take hold from from vindictive league types, the chairman of the ARL commission and News Limited Australia. Stick up for the game and shift the narrative!
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