The Boks and All Blacks will battle it out over the coming weeks to see who is the best in the game.
Here we go again: The Springboks and All Blacks meet in four Tests over the coming weeks. Picture: Grant Pitcher/Gallo Images/Getty Images
It’s finally here – the Test series rugby fans have been waiting for.
It doesn’t really get bigger than the Springboks taking on the All Blacks – in what has been called Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry. And it’s not just in a one-off Test, but four matches over the coming weeks.
Clashes between these two great rugby nations have also been billed as the “toughest of them all” and “the struggle for rugby supremacy”.
Those two terms were used in a book published in 2000, written by David Williams and Grant Harding. It chronicles the history between the teams. On the back cover it states: “When South African and New Zealand rugby men talk of their hardest, toughest games, it is always those played against each other – two rugby-mad countries where the game is virtually a religion.”
Indeed.
So here we stand, ahead of its next chapter. And, as has been the case for over 100 years of Tests between them, no one knows how this series will unfold. It is too close to call. History tells us that. But we know it’s going to be good.
Looking back
The teams met for the first time on 13 August 1921, in the small town of Dunedin on the south island of New Zealand, with the home team triumphing 13-5. Two weeks later in Auckland, the South Africans won 9-5. The third Test, in Wellington, was a 0-0 draw. Thus started a rivalry that has lasted 110 Tests.
While the All Blacks have just had the edge over the Boks over their history, winning 63 times to the 43 of the Boks, the last few years have seen the South Africans, under Rassie Erasmus, take charge.
The Boks have won seven of their last 10 clashes against the All Blacks and five of their last six. The three most significant victories in this period came in 2023 and last year.
In a pre-World Cup match played at Twickenham on 25 August 2023, the Boks beat the All Blacks 35-7. It was the heaviest defeat in the All Blacks’ history and gave the Boks the boost they needed going into the World Cup in France.
Two months later, in the final of that World Cup, the Boks met their greatest rivals again. On this occasion it was a much closer game, but the Boks won their third straight game in a row in the knockout rounds by a single point, edging the New Zealanders 12-11. The Boks had gone back-to-back, after also triumphing in the final in 2019.
Then, on 13 September last year, came the performance that sent shockwaves around the rugby world.
Having lost 17-24 in Auckland the week before, the Boks turned it on and thrashed the All Blacks 43-10 in Wellington, to again inflict their heaviest defeat in Test history, for the second time.
Rivalry continues
That was the last meeting between the teams until Saturday’s match. Since then the All Blacks have appointed a new coach, with Dave Rennie replacing Scott Roberston, while the Boks have continued on their merry ways. They go into the Ellis Park Test on a 12-match winning run.
Ask any rugby fan which Test matches really matter, which ones get the heart racing and they’ll tell you it’s always the Boks against the All Blacks. They are the ones you want to win.
The next four Tests will surely add plenty to the long history between these two teams, these giants of the game we so love. The rivalry simply continues to be something special.
