Planet Rugby’s Greatest Professional XV: Loosehead prop
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: Loosehead prop
Nominees:
Jason Leonard (119 caps, 1 try, 1 World Cup)
Os du Randt (80 caps, 5 tries, 2 World Cups)
Tendai Mtawarira (117 caps, 2 tries, 1 World Cup)
Tony Woodcock (118 caps, 10 tries, 2 World Cups)
Our shortlist contains a staggering 434 Test caps and six World Cup wins, a testimony to the durability and strength of our choices. Notable omissions include Rodrigo Roncero, Tom Smith, Mako Vunipola, Gethin Jenkins and Sylvain Marconnet, but we’re pretty confident the players we’ve chosen are the very best of the propping crop.
Jason Leonard is one of the most popular and well-respected players in rugby, as evidenced by his universal nickname “The Fun Bus”. Capped in the amateur era whilst he was a carpenter on a building site, as the game grew more and more professional, so “Jase” followed the same trajectory, step by step. Able to play on both sides at Test level, and failed World Cup finalist in 1991, Leonard stabilised England’s wobbling scrum in the final some 12 years later, when he came on as a replacement and greeted referee Andre Watson with the immortal line “It’s OK, Andre. I’m on now – we understand each other. You and me’ll sort this rubbish out, just tell me where you want the scrum height!”
True to his word, Leonard did precisely that and England ran out extra time winners. Not the most mobile of looseheads, his scrummaging work on his favoured side was supreme, best summed up by his former skipper, Martin Johnson, when he observed “You just never see Jason go backwards.”
Os du Randt, whilst a powerful scrummager, was more so regarded as the man that set the professional standards for a prop’s workrate and tackle count in open play. A World Cup winner in 1995, the mobile Du Randt continued to play for South Africa through the 1999 competition up until 2000 when back injuries prompted the big Cheetah to call it a day, until in 2003, Rassie Erasmus, who was coaching the Free State provincial team, asked Os to reconsider his retirement.
The invitation did the trick, and Du Randt agreed to give it another shot. Du Randt was the last active member of the South African 1995 Rugby World Cup-winning squad and retired as South Africa’s third most-capped player ever and most-capped forward. He missed the 2003 tournament through injury but later helped lead the Springboks to the 2007 Rugby World Cup, a fairy tale achievement, Du Randt commented: “I would have to say that I never thought I would bow out in a World Cup final, when I called it a day in 2000. To begin with a world title and to finish with another would be a real accomplishment, a memory that I will cherish forever.”
Tendai Mtawarira was the next great Springbok loosehead, a man that picked up where Du Randt left off and a prop that benefited hugely from the coaching of the old master. Easily the most dynamic scrummager of our four contenders, “The Beast” specialises in decimating his opponents on the big occasion and it’s a mark of his greatness that he’s the man that steps up when silverware is in sight. Hugely powerful in shoulder and arm, it’s arguable that his destruction of Phil Vickery and Dan Cole, 10 years apart, in the 2009 Lions Tests and 2019 Rugby World Cup Final were the pivotal and match-winning moments of both occasions.
Mtawarira, in big games, seems to personify the very spirit and soul of the modern Springboks, channelling the raw emotion, passion and desire of his team-mates through every sinew of his body and into the opposition scrum. In short, he (alongside his close friend Siya Kolisi) has become a metaphor for the continuing success of multi-cultural rugby in South Africa.
Tony Woodcock is a ball-handling, try scoring double World Cup winner. Possessing a wonderful skill-set, his all-court game was magnificently suited to the ambitions of the All Blacks and his 10 tries is the most for an international loosehead. With a career spanning three tournaments beginning in 2007, he started in three of his four appearances in the competition, the most notable being when he played the full 80 minutes of New Zealand’s shock 20-18 loss to France in the quarter-final of the World Cup.
Woodcock was retained in the All Blacks the following year and on August 2, 2008, he became the first All Black prop to score two tries in a match against Australia in over 50 years. He scored New Zealand’s only try in the 2011 Rugby World Cup Final against France, becoming the first All Black prop to cross the whitewash in a final at the global tournament. Woodcock’s 2015 World Cup was bittersweet for him, an injury in the pool stages ending his tournament, but he remained in the UK and collected his winner’s medal following New Zealand’s 31-17 victory in the final against Australia.
Combining his ability for ‘big occasion performances’ and his symbolic importance for multicultural rugby in his homeland, our loosehead of the pro era is the formidable Tendai “Beast” Mtawarira.