It is, as Squidge Rugby observed at the top of his latest More Squidge episode, the year of the prop. "This seems to be, and I'm not the first person to make this observation, the year of the prop," he said, name-checking Wales loosehead Rhys Carre, ball-carrying tighthead Sarah Bern in the women's game and a procession of Premiership and Top 14 front-rowers scoring tries from range every weekend.
So Squidge and co-host Joe Whitfield went one further. If 2026 really is the year of the prop, why not pick a fantasy XV made entirely of them?
The rules: men's props only, no hookers, line-out throwers welcome but not at the front of the queue. Tightheads are slotted as your ball carriers, looseheads as the engine, and tactical creativity is rewarded.
At fullback, both presenters reached for the same name immediately. "Ellis Genge was the first name that came to mind for me," Whitfield said. The Bristol and England loosehead has scored from range, can take a high ball and, as Squidge noted, has been deployed in the backfield under Eddie Jones' final England regime as a rugby-league-style returner.
Reese Carre — Wales' rising loosehead — was a unanimous pick on the left wing. "Has a great step on him, is genuinely really fast and athletic, like has a huge handoff, and the fact that he is so good in open spaces has really influenced Wales's game plan," Squidge argued, crediting Carre with reshaping how Wales attack in the Six Nations.
At centre the duo got creative. Wallabies prop Angus Bell, Squidge said, "is the quickest prop in the world," and Joe wanted him at outside centre purely on athletic grounds. Their bigger debate was where to deploy Bordeaux's Ben Tameifuna. Squidge was adamant the Tongan colossus should slot in at openside flanker, arguing he is among the most valuable players in the package: "Who works harder than him? Who is off the ground faster than him? Who is covering more ground than him? I don't think there's many players. He's a baller. He can do all of it."
The halfback debate produced the only really clean direct quote of the night. France loosehead Cyril Baille walked into the No. 9 jersey, the pair noting his offloading and ruck-distribution skills are now central to how France play. At fly-half they reached for Tadhg Furlong, with Squidge laughing that the Ireland tighthead is "a little bit like a 120-kilogram Phil Bennett when you think about it," referencing his celebrated 40-metre crossfield pass for Leinster.
The front row was where world rugby's geopolitics arrived in force. "You could put Thomas du Toit at loosehead and just go triple power," Squidge said, before settling on a Springbok-flavoured trio of du Toit, Ox Nche and Frans Malherbe — a unit they both agreed would "destroy everything in its path."
Locking the team caused most strife. With genuine line-out jumpers thin on the ground, the duo eventually landed on Edinburgh tighthead Sander Ferguson and New Zealand's Ethan de Groot, justified on a mix of height, work rate and lifting power. "Yeah, you've got work rate, Ferguson is also pretty tall, so you could probably lift him as well," Squidge reasoned.
The back row settled around Bordeaux's Tameifuna at six, Italy's Danilo Fischetti at openside and All Blacks loosehead Tamaiti Williams at No. 8. "He's the nailed-on number eight," Joe said of Williams. Wales' Nicky Smith was named first off the bench as a jackal threat.
The final question was whether their Prop XV could beat a hypothetical Winger XV. The verdict, predictably: yes, but only if they finished it inside half an hour. "They'd smash the hell out of them for half an hour," Squidge said. After that, he conceded, the lung-busting required to run wide channels would catch up — and the boys would be reaching for the early subs and a sausage roll at half-time.
