Mr Mark Alexander, President of SA Rugby, congratulated the Toyota Cheetahs’ Rabz Maxwane and Tian Schoeman for being honoured at the Guinness PRO14 awards ceremony in Dublin on Sunday night.

The Toyota Cheetahs duo were named among nine top achievers for the 2018/19 season at a glittering ceremony at the Guinness Storehouse in the Irish capital.

Maxwane walked away with the SportPesa Top-Try Scorer Award after finishing the pool stages of the Guinness PRO14 season as the top try scorer with an impressive 14 five-pointers, while Schoeman was named the Dacia Iron Man after playing an incredible 1564 minutes of rugby – the most by an individual in the competition this season.

Schoeman also boasts the bragging rights of being the fourth-highest points’ scorer in the 2018/2019 season with 134 points, while the Isuzu Southern Kings’ Masixole Banda was two places behind him on the table with 115 points.

Another three South Africans joined Maxwane among the top 10 try-scorers – the Toyota Cheetahs’ Shaun Venter scored 10 tries, while the Isuzu Southern Kings’ duo of Bjorn Basson and Yaw Penxe each touched down eight times.

“Congratulations to Rabz and Tian for earning these prestigious Guinness PRO14 awards,” said Mr Alexander.

“This a tough competition with top-class players, and for two players from our South African teams to be among the nine award winners is a fantastic achievement. Their class and consistency this season was admirable, and we are all very proud of them.

“It was also rewarding to see a handful of other Toyota Cheetahs and Isuzu Southern Kings players finish among the top point and try-scorers in the competition. This certainly shows the quality of our players.”

The other Guinness PRO14 award winners were Bill Mata (Edinburgh Rugby – Guinness Player’s Player of the Year), Kieran Crowley (Benetton Rugby – Guinness Coach of the Season), Ross Ford (Edinburgh Rugby – Guinness RO14 Chairman’s Award), Adam Hastings (Glasgow Warriors – Energia Next-Gen Star of the Season), Jaco van der Walt (Edinburgh Rugby – Gilbert Golden Boot), James King (Ospreys Rugby – Ronseal Tackle Machine), and Olly Robinson (Cardiff Blues – Big Red Cloud Turnover King).