Who Are the Best Rugby Players of All Time?

Dan Carter and Richie McCaw are the best rugby players of all time. However, every sport has a never-ending debate about who is the greatest rugby player of all time (GOAT). Rugby is a lot trickier to assess. It can be hard to determine the best player in rugby because all the positions are different and unique to the sport. 

Antoine Dupont has been widely regarded as the best player in the world over the last few years. But many other players have been as consistently the best as the French halfback. He has won every major trophy and individual award except the Rugby World Cup, whereas Pieter-Steph du Toit, Eben Etzebeth, and Cheslin Kolbe have won two RWC titles. 

The three Boks have been outstanding over the same period as Dupont. They have added two Rugby Championships (2019 & 2024), a British & Irish Lions series (2021) to their RWC wins. They reclaimed the Freedom Cup from New Zealand, the Nelson Mandela Challenge Plate from Australia, and won back-to-back Qatar Cups against the All Blacks (2023) and Wales (2024). 

The France scrumhalf, however, could not replicate his Paris 2024 Olympic heroics at the 2023 Rugby World Cup (RWC) in France as the hosts crashed out against South Africa in one of the greatest RWC matches. He has only won one Six Nations Championship despite playing for one of the best teams in the world. But he is the only Northern Hemisphere player to make the SportsBoom list of top ten rugby players of all time.

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Du Toit has a better claim to being the best rugby player in the world because of the trophies he’s won with South Africa, including back-to-back Rugby World Cup titles. He was named ‘World Rugby Men’s 15s Player of the Year’ in 2019. He was ‘Player of the Match’ in the Springboks 12-11 RWC final victory over New Zealand in Paris in 2023. 

Du Toit made 28 tackles in the final. He terrorised All Blacks playmaker Jordie Barrett, hitting the Kiwi with half a dozen tackles. Ardie Savea is the current 2023 World Rugby (WR) ‘Player of the Year’ despite Du Toit and Kolbe having a valid claim. Du Toit and Kolbe excelled in 2024, and will no doubt be up for the award again. The flanker was named Planet Rugby ‘Player of the 2024 Rugby Championship’ after helping the Boks claim the title.

Kolbe’s charge down of Thomas Ramos’ conversion in the 2023 RWC quarter-final helped win the Boks the William Webb Ellis trophy. Handré Pollard kicked the Boks to victory in six knockout matches across two RWC tournaments. Dupont, Du Toit, Savea, and Kolbe are superb players, but SportsBoom wants to know who the greatest rugby player of all time is.

The Best Rugby Union Players in History

Richie McCaw and Dan Carter might be the greatest two players of all time, but there have been many who have come close. South Africa and New Zealand have had a multitude of great players. Anyone of a dozen players from each country could be a top-three player of all time. 

The Southern Hemisphere nations have won nine of the ten RWC titles since 1987. There has never been a RWC final without one of the three countries. England won the World Cup in 2003. They are the only Northern Hemisphere nation to lift the Webb Ellis Cup. European teams look no closer to winning the 2027 RWC than any other because they do not possess teams filled with multiple great players. 

In the nineties, Jonah Lomu became the biggest superstar the sport has ever seen. Lomu and Bryan Habana hold the record for the most tries at Rugby World Cups. There has been nobody like him. For a decade, the colossal Kiwi wing was unstoppable. After the turn of the century, two more New Zealand players emerged. 

McCaw and Carter made their debuts within three years of each other. They would go on to be the two best players of all time. They have collectively won four Rugby World Cup titles and 19 Rugby Championship titles between them. McCaw captained the All Blacks to back-to-back titles (2011 and 2015). He was the first skipper to achieve this feat.

Siya Kolisi is the second captain to do so. Kolisi led the Boks to the 2019 and 2023 world titles. McCaw captain the Kiwis in 110 of his 148 Test matches. He won an incredible 131 of his 148 Tests, an international record. Carter and McCaw are the only two players to win three ‘World Rugby Men’s 15s Player of the Year’ awards. Carter is the highest points scorer in rugby history.

During the last two decades, South Africa and Australia have had multiple dozens of the best players in the world. Frans Steyn is the only player to win two RWC titles and back-to-back British & Irish Lions series in 2009 and 2021. 

No Wallabies player has been awarded the World Rugby ‘POTY’ trophy. The award was first handed out in 2001. Thirteen of the twenty-three players nominated multiple times for WR ‘POTY’ have come from the Southern Hemisphere’s ‘Big Three.’ These are SportsBoom’s best-ever rugby players. 

Antoine Dupont of France in action//Getty Images