Lions’ Marx shoo-in for top award

Today normally stands out as the pinnacle in the career of any aspiring rugby player especially after the highs of Springbok colours have been achieved.

The SA Player-of-the-Year for 2017 is being announced today and the winner will follow in the footsteps of players like Pieter-Steph du Toit (2016) and Lood de Jager (2015) who both walked away with the coveted award the last few years.

The young Lions hooker Malcolm Marx is seen as the frontrunner to be crowned this year and after collecting four awards at the Lions function last week, has been nominated in three categories.

Apart from being named in the main category, he was also nominated for Young Player and Super Rugby Player-of-the-Year.

Marx’s fellow nominees for SA Rugby Player-of-the-Year are stand-in Springbok captain Eben Etzebeth, flankers Siya Kolisi, Jaco Kriel and centre Jan Serfontein, all of whom were in impressive form not only for the Boks last season, but also for their Super Rugby franchises earlier in the season.

Marx hit the international scene like a cyclone after playing in 11 of the 12 Tests – missing just one forced by injury after earning three caps from the bench in 2016 when he was a mere 21 years of age.

If Marx does walk away with the award, one can only hope the same “ghost” which followed De Jager and Du Toit after they were named in 2015 and 2016 doesn’t have an effect on him too.

De Jager suffered a big dip in form in 2016 after being so impressive in World Cup year and only improved slightly last year but still had to wait to regain his place in the Bok starting line-up.

Du Toit, on the other hand, suffered from injury as well as the rise of Franco Mostert last year and had to be content to start most of his Tests from the bench until later in the Rugby Championship when he was mostly used as blindside flank by former Bok coach Allister Coetzee.

The Boks’ biggest headache last year was that Marx was performing so well that Coetzee said he simply couldn’t give other hookers like Bongi Mbonambi and Chiliboy Ralepelle a starting spot because Marx had become too important for the national team.

What counts in Marx’s favour – quite apart from his incredible upper body strength – is that he played as a loose forward at school.

The Boks need another big year from him.