This year's Rugby Players Ireland Awards ceremony will take place at the Aviva Stadium next Wednesday (May 28), and two members of the 2025 British & Irish Lions squad are in the running for the OCC Consulting Men's 15s Players' Player of the Year award.
Ireland and Lions duo Jamison Gibson-Park and Tadhg Beirne have made the prestigious shortlist, along with Beirne's Munster team-mate, Tom Farrell, and injured Leinster and Ireland captain Caelan Doris.
Centre Farrell has had a very impressive first season at Munster, emerging as the BKT United Rugby Championship's joint-top try scorer and leading ball carrier and offloader. His strong form could lead to an Ireland debut during July's summer tour.
Regarding as the highest individual honour in Irish men's rugby, the award is particularly meaningful as it is voted on by fellow players in recognition of their peers' efforts and excellence throughout the season. Last year's winner was Bundee Aki, with Doris honoured in 2023.
Ireland forward Dorothy Wall has received a timely morale boost following news of her long-term injury setback, with her team-mates nominating her for the OCC Consulting Women's 15s Players' Player of the Year. She is shortlisted alongside Amee-Leigh Costigan, Aoife Dalton, and Niamh O'Dowd, each of whom played pivotal roles in a season of continued progress for Scott Bemand's Rugby World Cup-bound side.
Wall was the 2021 winner of the coveted individual award, while Sam Monaghan, Neve Jones, and Aoife Wafer, the newly-announced Guinness Women's Six Nations Player of the Championship, have followed in her footsteps these last three years.
22-year-old Ireland centre Dalton is nominated in a second category, with Ruth Campbell and Erin King providing stiff competition for the Energia Ireland Women's 15s Player of the Year honour. Dalton won the award before in 2023.
Returning to host the awards evening at Irish Rugby HQ next week, fan favourites Andrew Trimble and Barry Murphy will once again bring their trademark humour and insight to the stage.
In contention to be crowned the Nevin Spence Men's 15s Young Player of the Year are Sam Prendergast and Gus McCarthy, who both made their Ireland senior debuts during the 2024 Autumn Nations Series, and Connacht's exciting scrum half Ben Murphy.
One of the Ireland Men's Sevens 'Originals' from 2015, two-time Olympian Mark Roche goes up against Niall Comerford and Dylan O'Grady for the TritonLake Men's Sevens Players' Player of the Year award.
Talented teenager Hannah Clarke, who scored 10 tries during her first World Sevens Series campaign with Ireland, is nominated in the Women's Sevens category, alongside Kate Farrell McCabe and Lucinda Kinghan.
The MSL Mercedes-Benz Ballsbridge Men's 15s Try of the Year will be won by either Dan Sheehan, who has two scores nominated - one for Leinster, and the other for Ireland in the Guinness Men's Six Nations opener against England - or Ulster's Stewart Moore, who finished off a brilliant four-man breakaway effort against the DHL Stormers.
Leading the AIB Corporate Banking Women's 15s Try of the Year shortlist is star winger Costigan, who showed her speed and finishing skills to touch down from a Dannah O'Brien kick against England in Cork.
Also up for the award are Linda Djougang, who notched an excellent team try away to Wales, and Anna McGann, whose last-minute score against Italy was nominated for the Women's Six Nations Try of the Championship.
In addition to celebrating on-field excellence, the Rugby Players Ireland Awards night will honour off-field achievements, including a special tribute to the 'Tackle Your Feelings' campaign—an initiative backed by hundreds of Rugby Players Ireland members - ahead of its 10th anniversary later this year.