Our World XV of 2025!
The Ruck
Reynolds Alfie
3.4 • 566 Ratings
🗓️ 29 December 2025
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's the end of 2025 so in keeping with tradition The Ruck's end of year selection meeting is back as Alfie, Alex, Will and Elgan name a world XV of the year.
South Africa are the number 1 side in the world but how many springboks will make it into the team? Who gets selected at fly-half? And, in a year where positional versatility has been so important what does the bench look like?
Plus, given that the 2025 British & Irish Lions tour wasn't a 'vintage' series, how much weight do they put on Lions selection? Which big name superstar misses out? And, despite hardly playing any international rugby this year, does Antoine Dupont make it?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome along to the Ruck, the journalist's rugby podcast from The Times and the Sunday Times. |
| 0:20.0 | I'm Alfie Reynolds and very excited to be sat alongside Elgin Alderman, Alex Lowe and Will Keller her for the Rucks 15 of the year. How you doing, Jens? Merry Christmas to all of you. We're wearing our Christmas jumpers, aren't we? Elgin and I. And you guys have just not brought the theme at all. Well, I feel like Alex and I are staying true to form |
| 0:38.7 | because last year when we did this episode, |
| 0:40.3 | you tried to get us to wear like reindeer atlas and stuff like that. |
| 0:44.0 | Christmas spirit. |
| 0:44.8 | Which quickly got snubbed. |
| 0:46.4 | So yeah, Alex and I are not in the spirit in that way. |
| 0:49.1 | Yourself and Elginar, it's an even split. |
| 0:50.9 | We are balanced to journalists if nothing else. |
| 0:54.1 | We bring colour, light and shade, you know. |
| 0:56.5 | Exactly. Well, welcome along. As I say, I hope all of you listening have had a brilliant Christmas. |
| 1:00.7 | And those of you that have been listening for a while will know that when it comes to the end of the calendar year, we always try and do our world 15 of the year, which is always a bit of fun. |
| 1:09.2 | It always provokes a big reaction for nations that |
| 1:11.3 | people think we've been biased against and haven't selected fairly. So, firstly, I suppose, Alex Elgin |
| 1:18.6 | Will, how difficult did you find it this year? Always throws up interesting positions every year. |
| 1:22.9 | How difficult was it, do you think? Firstly, given how the game has evolved and shifted in the last 12 months, we may have to come up with the 23. |
| 1:29.3 | Normally it's our 15, but it's a 23-man game now more than ever. |
| 1:33.3 | As we've discovered through the course of the year, so actually in some ways, there's a few positions on the bench that I've got, who I wouldn't consider for the 15, but we'll get to that. |
| 1:43.3 | There are a few positions which are hard, either because there's unbelievable options |
| 1:47.7 | or in a couple of positions because it's not actually a vintage year for competition at 10, |
| 1:55.0 | for outside centre competition, for example, just to pick two. |
| 1:58.8 | So there's a few South Africans who pick themselves, |
... |
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