In this Olympic season of champs and chumps, it seems appropriate to ask “who is the world’s best rugby team at the present time?” We’ve considered the stats and trophy cabinets and come up with five contenders for The World’s Best. Take a look at our short-list, then cast your vote below.
Yes, South Africa are RWC-winners – double-winners no less – and on Saturday they showed the Argies a thing or two about putting points on the board. But the team travels poorly and the RWC win is oh so last year. Significantly, they have an unfortunate habit of losing to top tier sides such as New Zealand and Australia. The Springboks were famously left out of the 1987 World Cup, which the All Blacks won. Bok fans like to believe that if their team been allowed to play, New Zealand would not have won that tournament. But the fact is the Boks have played the ABs 37 times since 1987 and have lost 70% of those matches. They have also lost most of their matches to Australia over the same period. The Springboks are undoubtedly the best team in South Africa, but as for the World’s Best? You be the judge.
The mighty New Zealand All Blacks currently hold the trophies for all the tournaments in which they compete, save one – the RWC. Their inability to win World Cups is well-known and a mark against them being judged World’s Best. Further, their grip on the Bledisloe and Tri-Nations Cups looked decidedly shaky a few weeks ago when they were given a real going over by an unproven Wallaby team. Yet they remain the most successful team – in terms of win-loss ratios – in the history of the sport.
Australia currently holds both the Cook Cup (which means they’re better than England) and the Mandela Plate (which means they’re better than South Africa). Like South Africa, they are double-RWC winners. They have also won two-thirds of their matches over the past decade. But their best claim to The World’s Best is that they are All Black-killers. I’m not saying they have a winning record against New Zealand – no team does – but the Wallabies have the least-worst losing record. They have only lost 52% of their matches against the ABs over the past 10 years. This compares with losing records of 68% for South Africa, 71% for France, 82% for England, and 100% for Wales.
The Welsh hold the 6N trophy which suggests they’re the top team in Europe in 2008. But their performance is often erratic. Their last Grand Slam came in 2005. Between then and now they were horrible, finishing fifth in 2006 and 2007. Even Italy did better than Wales last year. Even Italy! Plus, the Welsh are pretty hopeless against the SANZAR teams. In the last 20 years they’ve managed only two wins against 37 losses against 3N teams.
USA are the current Olympic champions, having beaten France 17-3 in 1924, the last time rugby was contested on the Olympic stage. In fact, the Americans have the best Olympic record of any nation winning gold in both 1920 and 1924. But since then it’s been all downhill. They managed to scrape a narrow 3-point win over Japan in the 1987 RWC, but that was about it. It’s been losses ever since. But you never know, 2008 could yet be their year.
Okay, time to cast your vote…
Filed under: All Blacks, Argentina, Bledisloe Cup, Boks, England, France, IRB, New Zealand, Olympics, Rugby World Cup, SANZAR, Six Nations, South Africa, Springboks, Tri-Nations, USA, Wales, Wallabies, rugby
I like your comment on how South Africa travel poorly, forgotten Dunedin already?
Give me a free €100 bet on a SA-NZ game and I’d put in on NZ.
Ask me to wager €100 of my own money and I’d go SA every time.
NZ: Pure class.
SA: Pure dependable.
S.
And I’ll say it again… SA won their two WC’s when all the nations was involved…the only true World Champions was crownd from 1995 onwards…FACT.
Good game in Cape Town wasn’t it!
‘95 was political charity, ‘07 SA played no top tier teams… FACT.
And I’ll say it again… SA won their two WC’s when all the nations was involved…the only true World Champions was crownd from 1995 onwards…FACT
That was what all the jarpies said at the time, too, until Australia and NZ toured and BOTH thumped the boks, and every province they played.
The USA also beat Japan in the 2003 WC. I have a new invention for you its called wikipedia, likely to be found on your nearest web connected browser.
Good call Pete – I missed that one buried as it was among 70 years of defeats. And thanks for inventing Wikipedia too.
allblacks rock like melinda fair to good for any one winners of trinations yet again top copmp in world trinations
The ABs are the best team in the world except for 80 mins every four years.
I’d love to say USA, and theyre certainly not a bad team now, but definitely nowhere near New Zealand, nobody can touch the All Blacks. So, even though my heart says USA, I have to listen to my mind on this one and vote New Zealand
NZ are the best consistantly, south africa are second in the world. There can be no doubt, they won world cup and lions tour. Only NZ and AUS can even think about completing competatively. Southern hemisphere teams seem to throttle the northern hemisphere sides
I think you need to check you facts … South Africa has by far the best win ration vs NZ in the world! Much better than Australia.
NZ vs Aus – 67% win
NZ vs SA – 53% win
source:
http://www.rugbydata.com/newzealand/teamsplayed
Hi JasonG,
Thanks for writing. The reason for our different figures is that I limited my assessment to the last 10 years whereas the figures from RugbyData are for all time. No one disputes the Boks used to be a great team, but times have changed. You can probably guess that I love crunching numbers. I may do some re-analysis of these data after the November tour. But here here are some updated figures covering 2000-2009. This seems only fair since the Boks had a great year against the ABs winning 3 tests while the Wallabies were woeful losing 4:
Sprinboks: 8 wins from 23 games = 34.8%
Wallabies: 7 wins from 23 games = 30.4%
By the way, I usually get my data from Pick and Go
I appreciate the stats update, and I do think the last year has changed the standings a little. If we are looking at the “current” best team in the world then the Boks have a pretty good standing. South Africa currently are:
1) World Cup Champions
2) Tri nations Champions
3) Lions tour Champions
4) 1st place in IRB World Rankings (which is an internationally accepted measure of the current best team in the world devised by experts)
On the other hand, if we are not looking at the best team right now but rather the best team in the world overall, then we have to look at the stats over all time, because to pick a specific time frame can bias the results in a number of different teams favour! eg. Pick the period 2000 – 2005 and England will be strong contender with a 78% win ratio! (and we all know England are not the best team in thw world by a long shot)
Over all time the stats speak for themselves:
1) All Blacks – winning ratio over all other teams
2) Springboks – winning ratio over all other teams except ABs (53% AB – 42% boks)
3) Australia – winning ratio over all teams except the above two.
In a few weeks I will do another best team of the year award and South Africa are certainly in with a shot, but not because they won the RWC (where the luck of the draw protected them from facing any of the top three teams) or beat the Lions (by one solitary post-buzzer kick) or the IRB ranking (which is biased towards RWC performances and therefore merely amplifies the quirk mentioned above).
No, to be the best you have to consistently and unequivocally defeat the best. So the Boks’ best claim to the crown is that in 2009 they beat the All Blacks three times running including one away game. If I was a Bok fan, that would be my trump card. But then try telling that to Leiceister.
Like a good wine it all depends on the year. At present I’d say the Boks have a brilliant side (thanks to Jake White and his foresight). This is going to change obviously – Pieter de Villiers inherited a top notch side and he will need big balls to keep his side on top. I’m a South African and I put my money on the most consistent side: the All Blacks. Their track record speaks for itself. P.S. Don’t fool yourself that ‘95 was a charity case. You need to watch the game again to see why NZ lost – and they weren’t playing to lose. Except for the ‘food poisoning’ LOL – they were out there to rip our arseholes out and were doing a damned fine job at it.