France and Ireland dominate World Rugby Men’s 15s Dream Team for 2023
World Rugby has unveiled the 2023 Men’s Dream Team of the Year, an XV stacked with bruising physicality, electric pace and otherworldly skillsets.
All Blacks No. 8 Ardie Savea was crowned Player of the Year and rightly takes his place in the team after missing out a year ago to France’s mighty Grégory Alldritt.
Savea is one of four New Zealanders to feature in the team, while their Rugby World Cup final opponents South Africa claim just one representative.
The bulk of the XV comes from Ireland and France, with five players apiece. The form of the two recent Six Nations champions has denied Rugby World Cup bronze finalists England and Argentina any place in the dream team, despite colossal campaigns from the likes of Ben Earl and Marcos Kremer.
Just three players have managed to back up their selection in 2022’s dream team in 2023, with Ireland’s Tadgh Furlong, France’s Antoine Dupont and New Zealand’s Will Jordan claiming consecutive selections. It is in fact the third straight year that the trio has been selected, an incredible display of consistent excellence at rugby’s highest level.
World Rugby Men’s 15s Dream Team of the Year:
1. Cyril Baille (France)
2. Dan Sheehan (Ireland)
3. Tadhg Furlong (Ireland)
4. Eben Etzebeth (South Africa)
5. Scott Barrett (New Zealand)
6. Caelan Doris (Ireland)
7. Charles Ollivon (France)
8. Ardie Savea (New Zealand)
9. Antoine Dupont (France)
10. Richie Mo’unga (New Zealand)
11. Will Jordan (New Zealand)
12. Bundee Aki (Ireland)
13. Garry Ringrose (Ireland)
14. Damian Penaud (France)
15. Thomas Ramos (France).
This is ridiculous!…irrespective of the disdain and hatred of the Springboks, to have 1 in the team shows the nonsensical decision to even expose this nonsense…actually embarrassing. From a neutral.
Yes…..let's all hail the dream ON team…….🤣
1 Bok????
Scott “Red Card” Barrett 🤙
How many cards did Scott get this year? Is that the standard?
I’m a kiwi and fervent supporter of the ABs. I have to say that it doesn’t make sense to me that there is only one spring bok in this team. At the end of the day for good or bad, they played and beat all the top teams.
This dream team was picked with the whole year in mind and not just the WC. With that in mind, Malcolm Marx should be the hooker, P-S du Toit should be in there, and Tele’a should be there at wing (if not Kolbe, who had 1 bad day under the high ball all year).
This must be the greatest consulation prize WR can offer for the quarter final loosers and Northern Hemisphere hopefuls. Its a joke…to rate Penaud in front of Kolbe is pathetic to say the least.
Really the bitterness on display by World Rugby and by New Zealanders the past few days has left a sour taste, for all that I hope the Boks come back and hit the books, start to prepare for the next one, we’ll keep breaking them until they acknowledge who we are!
The forward pack , bar 2 maybe 3 players looks like a world cup development team.