| International U19 Player of the Year | |
|---|---|
| Presented by | IRB |
| First awarded | 1999 |
| Last awarded | 2007 |
The IRB International U19 Player of the Year was awarded by the International Rugby Board in the autumn each year from 2002 to 2007. In 2008, it was combined with the IRB International U21 Player of the Year into the IRB Junior Player of the Year award.
New Zealand) New Zealand)
Wales) New Zealand)
France) New Zealand) New Zealand)
Australia) New Zealand)
Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated in England in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In its most common form, a game is played between two teams of 15 players each, using an oval-shaped ball on a rectangular field called a pitch. The field has H-shaped goalposts at both ends.
World Rugby is the world governing body for the sport of rugby union. World Rugby organises the Rugby World Cup every four years, the sport's most recognised and most profitable competition. It also organises a number of other international rugby competitions, such as the World Rugby Sevens Series, the Rugby World Cup Sevens, the World Under 20 Championship, and the Pacific Nations Cup.
Waisale Tikoisolomoni Serevi is a Fijian former rugby union football player and coach, and is a member of the World Rugby Hall of Fame. Serevi is renowned for his achievements in rugby sevens, while also enjoying a long career in fifteen-a-side rugby at both club and national team levels. Nicknamed "The Wizard" by commentators, he is widely considered to be the greatest rugby sevens player in the history of the game. A biography of Serevi titled Waisale Serevi: King of Sevens by Nick Darvenzi was published in 2018.
Rugby union has been a men's medal sport at the modern Summer Olympic Games, being played at four of the first seven competitions. The sport debuted at the 1900 Paris games where the gold medal was won by the host nation. It was subsequently featured at the London games in 1908, the Antwerp games in 1920 and the Paris games in 1924.
Junior Malili "Mils" Muliaina is a former professional rugby union player who most recently played for San Francisco Rush in the US PRO Rugby competition. He played primarily as a fullback, though he has also played as a centre and on the wing.
Fiji Rugby Union (FRU) is the governing body for the sport of rugby union in Fiji. It is divided into over 30 provincial unions. The Fiji Rugby Union is a member of the Pacific Islands Rugby Alliance (PIRA), along with Samoa and Tonga. There are approximately 80,000 registered players from a total population of around 950,000.
The 2011 Rugby World Cup was the seventh Rugby World Cup, a quadrennial international rugby union competition inaugurated in 1987. The International Rugby Board (IRB) selected New Zealand as the host country in preference to Japan and South Africa at a meeting in Dublin on 17 November 2005. The tournament was won by New Zealand, who defeated France 8–7 in the final. The defending champions, South Africa, were eliminated by Australia 11–9 in the quarter-finals. The result marked the third time that the tournament was won by the country that hosted the event.
The New Zealand national rugby sevens team competes in the World Rugby Sevens Series, Rugby World Cup Sevens, Summer Olympic Games and the Commonwealth Games. They have won a record twelve World Rugby Sevens Series titles. The team has been officially known as the All Blacks Sevens since 1 June 2012.
Sir Gordon Frederick Tietjens is head coach of the Samoa rugby sevens team, and a celebrated former coach of the New Zealand men's national team in rugby sevens, the All Blacks Sevens. When the International Rugby Board inducted him into the IRB Hall of Fame in May 2012, it said that "Tietjens' roll of honour is without peer in Sevens, and perhaps in the Game of Rugby as a whole." According to Spiro Zavos, Tietjens is "The greatest of all the Sevens coaches".
Rugby union in Samoa is the country's most popular sport. The national teams in both the standard 15-man game and rugby sevens are consistently competitive against teams from vastly more populous nations.
The World Rugby Awards are given out annually by World Rugby, the worldwide governing body for rugby union, for major achievement in the sport. The idea of rewarding excellence in rugby was disclosed in 2001 following the Annual Meeting of the International Rugby Board Council in Copenhagen, and the first ceremony was first awarded later that year. The International Rugby Players' Association also gives out two awards, for Try of the Year and Special Merit, as a part of the programme.
The IRB International U21 Player of the Year was awarded by the International Rugby Board in the autumn each year from 2001 to 2006. In 2008, it was combined with the IRB International U19 Player of the Year to create the IRB Junior Player of the Year award.
The IRB International Sevens Team of the Year was awarded by the International Rugby Board in the November or December each year from 2002 to 2007. In 2002 and 2003, the award was called the IRB Sevens Team of the Year.
Uale Mai Vala is a retired rugby union player who played for the country's national teams, Manu Samoa and Samoa Sevens. He is a former captain of the Samoa Sevens team which represent Samoa internationally in the IRB Sevens World Series. He was at the time of his retirement sevens rugby's most capped player, and Mai is considered one of the greats in the international sport. Mai has been one of the top points scorers in the IRB World Sevens Series.
The World Rugby Sevens Player of the Year is awarded by World Rugby each year. It was first awarded in 2004. The award is based in large part on the player’s performance over the course of the World Rugby Sevens Series, along with other Sevens tournaments during the year.
The 2007–08 IRB Sevens World Series was the ninth of an annual IRB Sevens World Series of rugby sevens tournaments for full national sides run by the International Rugby Board since 1999–2000.
Lote Raikabula is a New Zealand rugby player who has played both Rugby Union and Rugby sevens. He currently plays for the All Blacks Sevens team in the IRB Sevens World Series & is the Rugby coach for Trinity College, Kandy. He has played more than 60 tournaments since his debut in 2006, playing in 20 tournament-winning teams. With five IRB Sevens World Series medals, a Rugby World Cup Sevens title and two Commonwealth Games gold medals he is arguably New Zealand Sevens' most successful player.
Rugby union trophies and awards have been given out to teams and participants from the very earliest days of the sport's history. In common with many other sports rugby union has an array of competitions, both domestic international, covering the spectrum of competition structures from season long leagues, to one-off matches. The list below is divided into sections such that trophies and awards competed for by national sides are grouped together, as are those competed for by club and provincial sides. In both cases, the type of award can differ. The award might be a perpetual trophy, which is one competed for in perpetuity by two sides such that on each occasion they meet, which may or may not be on a regular basis, that honour is contested. The award may be one that is given to the winner of a tournament, or as a subset of this, as an award for a particular honour attained in that tournament. Additionally, the sport of rugby union bestows certain honours on individual players, and these too have their own dedicated section below.
Sio Julian Savea is a New Zealand rugby union player. He currently plays wing for Hurricanes in Super Rugby Aotearoa. Savea formerly played for Toulon in the Top 14, and is a former captain of the Wellington Lions in the Mitre 10 Cup. Between 2012 and 2017 he won 54 caps for New Zealand.
The New Zealand women's national rugby sevens team is the reigning women's Rugby World Cup Sevens champions, having won the most recent edition in 2018. The team has participated in all rounds of the World Rugby Women's Sevens Series since the competition's inception in 2012–13. In 2018, the team won the Team of the Year award at the Halberg Awards.