The Rugby Blog: Could Lobzhanidze be Breakthrough Player of the Year?

The Rugby Blog has launched a poll to reveal the World Rugby Breakthrough Player of the year.

Georgia’s Vasil Lobzhanidze is among the three candidates for the award, the others being Scotland’s Mark Bennett and New Zealand’s Nehe Milner-Skudder. Lobzhanidze is in first place with 5’591 votes, 95% of the overall votes.

In order to be eligible, players have to have been playing senior international rugby for less than a year.

The website emphasized that the nominees were selected by an independent panel, comprising of former Wallaby scrum-half Gregan, former Argentina captain Felipe Contepomi and journalists Stephen Jones, Sarah Mockford and Jim Kayes.

Young Lobzhanidze wrote his name in the Rugby World Cup history books when he started in Georgia’s opening win over Tonga, becoming the youngest player in the tournament’s history to d so at 18 years and 340 days.

He also played against New Zealand and Namibia to help Georgia secure their qualification for the Rugby World Cup in 2019, all only four months after he inspired his country to its first World Rugby U20 Trophy title.

Photo: Reuters