Planet Rugby’s Greatest Professional XV: Left wing
As professional rugby reaches its 25th anniversary and with time to reflect on those incredible years, we decided it’s time to look at the greatest players we’ve seen grace the pitches and screens of the world.
Over the next 15 days, we will give you our take on the four best players in each position, together with our choice for the Planet Rugby Professional XV.
You’ll have the chance to vote for yours and we will publish the readers’ team on the 16th day, together with some of the opinion comments from our readers and on social media.
The players will be listed traditionally, starting at 15 to 9 then 1 to 8.
The players are judged on their contribution to the pro era only. As a default we have only considered players that played 50% of their time or more in the professional era.
We have also taken into consideration the success they enabled for their team together with individual records, leadership skills, and overall contribution to the wider ethos of the sport and rugby in their home country.
We are well aware some greats haven’t made the cut but believe us when we say the debate needed around the office to get to this shortlist was exhaustive and not without some heated emotion!
Planet Rugby’s Greatest Professional XV: Left wing
Nominees:
Bryan Habana (124 caps, 67 tries)
Joe Rokocoko (66 caps, 46 tries)
Jonah Lomu (63 caps, 37 tries)
Shane Williams (91 caps, 60 tries)
Today’s quartet offer 210 scintillating tries between them. Contrasting styles from each proves that rugby accommodates all shapes and sizes and in truth, we’d be happy to declare them all joint winners.
It’s almost unthinkable to leave out players of the class of Joe Roff, Rupeni Caucaunibuca and the incredible intellect of Phillipe Saint-Andre but our four candidates are some of the most exciting players the world has ever witnessed.
Bryan Habana is arguably the greatest of all Springboks. 2007 was the year the Blue Bull-cum-Stormer inked his name in immortality winning the World Cup with South Africa and becoming the IRB Player of the Year. Habana, a genuine gas merchant with a devastating outside break, took the Springboks’ all-time try-scoring record during the 2011 World Cup.
Timed at 10.2 seconds for 100 metres, 2006 saw him race a cheetah for charity and although Habana lost, it says everything about the left winger’s skills that the cheetah never managed to displace his opponent on the Springbok left wing, a berth Habana owned with huge pride and dignity for some 124 Tests. His record of 67 Test tries is the second highest in history and the most by a player from a Tier One nation.
Joe Rokocoko hailed from Fiji but moved to New Zealand at the age of five. His early impact in international rugby was spectacular, netting 25 tries in his first 20 games and breaking the record for Tier One nations when scoring 17 in a season in 2003. Four hat-tricks followed -against France (2003), Australia (2003), England (2004) and Romania (2007) – but after New Zealand were dumped out of the World Cup in 2007, Roko inexplicably experienced a two-year drought before crossing the whitewash once more against Italy in 2009.
In truth, Smokin’ Joe suffered a drop off in his effectiveness towards the end of his international career, his last 16 Tests only yielding three scores, but the strike rate of a try per game he enjoyed in those first four years of brilliance is virtually unmatched in Test rugby over any sustained period of time.
Jonah Lomu was rugby’s first global superstar. A huge and hard man but with the warmest of hearts, no single player has had more impact on the game than the big man from Auckland. No single player has informed back play, training, expectation and physicality than Lomu. No player is recognised globally as readily as Lomu. There is no need to reference Lomu’s on-field achievements as that denudes completely the impact he had on our game.
In short, he was to rugby what Pele was to football, what Bradman is to cricket and what Tiger Woods is to golf; a player that completely transcended the sport he played. Tragically passing away with kidney issues in 2015, a week after watching his beloved All Blacks lift the World Cup in Twickenham, his legacy lives forever and his charity work, his community coaching work and his iconic status in the game made more kids pick up a rugby ball than any before or any since. In the simplest terms, he is, without question, the greatest and most complete rugby player the world has ever seen.
Shane Williams was a try scoring genius and lies third in the all-time Test try list for Tier One nations. A tiny figure standing only 1.70m tall and weighing 80 kilograms, his elusive running and acceleration saw him deliver 60 tries in the red of both Wales and the British and Irish Lions. Winning the IRB Player of the Year award in 2008, Williams’ impact was so great he was inducted into Rugby’s Hall of Fame in 2016, alongside co-nominee Lomu (2011).
Williams’ last international match ended in him scoring a final blow to round off his glittering career, as he crossed for his 58th Welsh try with the very last touch of his international career in added time as the game finished 24–18 to Australia, the perfect way to sign off.
Despite the outstanding talent on display and even taking into account the incredible case made for Habana, there is only one possible winner here, the most complete and greatest player in the history of the game, Jonah Lomu.