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Three Springboks, three All Blacks named in L’Equipe's Best XV 2024

South Africa's Eben Etzebeth with New Zealand's Ardie Savea in 2018 (Photo by Steve Haag/Getty Images)

Six Rugby Championship players have gained recognition in the 2024 L’Equipe team of the year. Voted by fans of the French daily sports newspaper, the XV also has three Irish players along with a six-strong France representation headed up by Antoine Dupont – who received a whopping 5,034 of the 5,232 votes (96.22 per cent) for best scrum-half.

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South Africa, the reigning back-to-back Rugby World Cup winners, finished the year as World Rugby’s No1 ranked side following a Rugby Championship title-winning season and their exploits were recognised by the inclusion of Cheslin Kolbe, Pieter-Steph du Toit and Eben Etzebeth in the L’Equipe XV.

The three All Blacks voted in were Will Jordan, Jordie Barrett and Ardie Savea and they were joined by Ireland’s Bundee Aki, Tadhg Furlong and Andrew Porter.

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French players made up the remainder of the XV, with Louis Bielle-Biarrey and Thomas Ramos joining Dupont in the back line. Up front, the three Les Bleus forwards named were Francois Cros, Emmanuel Meafou and Peato Mauvaka.

L’Equipe’s best XV greatly contrasted with World Rugby’s 2024 dream team where South Africa has seven players, Ireland four, New Zealand three and Argentina one.

L’EQUIPE TEAM OF 2024: 15. Will Jordan (New Zealand); 14. Cheslin Kolbe (South Africa), 13. Bundee Aki (Ireland), 12. Jordie Barrett (New Zealand), 11. Louis Bielle-Biarrey (France); 10. Thomas Ramos (France), 9. Antoine Dupont (France); 1. Andrew Porter (Ireland), 2. Peato Mauvaka (France), 3. Tadhg Furlong (Ireland), 4. Eben Etzebeth (South Africa), 5. Emmanuel Meafou (France), 6. Francois Cros (France), 7. Pieter-Steph du Toit (South Africa), 8. Ardie Savea (New Zealand).

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Comments

8 Comments
N
NE 89 days ago

Clearly some bias in this selection but the fact that 3 SA players are included (non of whom are better than club rugby level players given neutral officials) makes it even more absurd.

S
Soliloquin 90 days ago

Except for a buzz and comments like those already posted, I do not get the point of publishing a World XV chosen by chauvinistic fans who are more into the Top14 and the Champions Cup.

It would have been way more interesting to post the World XV chosen by l’Équipe’s journalists, where there are 6 Saffas, 4 Kiwis and 3 French players, excluding Dupont.

J
Jmann 90 days ago

Better than Goode's team - but missing Lomax which is a slam dunk for that spot. Plus - way too many Frenchmen

G
GM 90 days ago

Agree with Nickers. Aki dropped by Ireland but selected here out of position. Furlong at tight head? This is selection by committee at its worst.

G
GP 90 days ago

On form it was not Ardie's best year . 2022-23 , the best . But he is a great. Jordie Barrett had a great year. Particularly pleased Will Jordan was selected and at Fullback. He came back late due to rehab and eventually was picked at 15, after being on the wing.Will is instinctive and intelligent as a 15. Codie Taylor is unlucky not to be picked. When he came back after a sabbatical to the Crusaders and during the AB's campaign he was inspirational. He had some stiff opposition in the All Blacks case to.

N
Nickers 90 days ago

This team should be called the "2023 Form and Reputation with a French Bias XV"

T
Tom 90 days ago

Gotta love the French. Nearly half the team is French including a fullback at 10. :D

B
Bull Shark 90 days ago

Agreed. They should do a News24 version. There’d be 12 springboks in the starting 15. And an all Bok bench.

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J
JW 1 hour ago
The raw data that proves Super Rugby Pacific is currently a cut above

Your links are private if you were intending them to be shared.


URC us doing very well with it’s competitiveness given that each group has it’s own salary caps and entirely different makeups, from clubs, to provinces, to franchises and regions. One group might be teams from the most populace country with the biggest rugby base while another the smallest, with the least amount of rugby players to chose from.

On average, just about one SRP game every weekend has been decided in the last five minutes!

I would also be interested in a average clock length (don’t need to go into the whole BIP hole) showing how long the last phases are taking (because one team is trying to still alter the match points outcome in some way) to complete before the game finally ends. I don’t know if its more common this year but in general I wonder if its a stat that can show how good games are/were?

17.7%

You really had the same reversed 10 points lead % as you had lead changes after the 75th?


Some of these values while standing out numerically against each other have a much less correlative impact than some that tighter differences which might only stick out a small amount. While SRP’s ones might not necessarily be such examples (and here I’m still going off the basic principle that everyone knew this was happening, even though I was challenged about that assumption) they have had the advantage of the fixtures being were doctored even more than normal. In this instance its irrelevant whether they were doctored or not of course, but I think it’s pretty safe to say that there hasn’t been a lot of cross over of worst v best yet. Maybe it just feels like that because the worst are so much better this year? I definitely think that it is undeniable that all the bottom teams (that remain) have gotten better.


So I would be very interested in another weight graph of the games still, but regardless I don’t think it’s fair for SRP to claim anything over the other leagues yet. Certainly as I have said numerous times about the Top 14, it’s sub par compared to what it’s billed up to be, but that is the only league in this group that has promotion and relegation, which is the antitheses of a competitive league, so a trade off there.


Thank you very much for sharing your research though Dmitri, I hope you find another topic to get interested about!

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