The long drought continues at Eden Park

Australia never had a great rugby era in the nineties at all, they won a few and lost plenty so nothing's changed as of today. Australia has never ever been 'great' at rugby the historical records show that, (ignore World Cups as any team at all with luck can win them) ~~check them out mate, and I find it quite odd that you should state that ''Rugby is the National game" in New Zealand whereby the National game in Aussie' is AFL no less and is the best Country in the World at it and we all know the reason for that. They also play many other team sports of varying type, and they're not very good at them either, just passable, so it's no wonder that the Historybook doesn't show Australian rugby in a good light at all. So there you are, New Zealand have rugby and many other sports played but are only good at one of them and we all know what that is, Australia on the other hand have AFL and many other sports played and they're only any good at one of them, and we all know what that is. So at the end of the day the Kiwis can beat the Aussies in most sports sometimes, but will beat them at rugby on a regular basis like they always have. ~ Then of course the Aussies have that sport of AFL which the Kiwis pretty much get a good laugh at and have never played and generally consider they'd be better off playing rugby with the build of a lot of a lot of them. So Lebowski there's no sport apart from AFL that those pesky Kiwis can't beat you at sometimes, but the Kiwis have that wonderful team of rugby players who've dominated the scene since day dot, which you Aussies rarely if ever beat, and the Kiwis deal to you guys any old time at all!

Jake, take away 18 million from your population, knock back your government investment by at least half, & then see how you go in comparison to us. NZ, along with Australia, are two of the best pound for pound sports nations on Earth. How many medals did NZ win at the Olympics? 18. How many did Australia win? 29. Who's population is 5 times the size of the others? For the record, we've won 2 golfing majors, & we have't had success in Tennis for ages, but Anthony Wilding once one Wimbledon 4 times in a row. Surfing? Bahahaha, surfing? Some hobby that's only restricted to a few warm, big waves countries in the world? NZ has still had a few world series competitors though, & I believe we have a couple of decent women at the moment. Moto GP? We've had plenty of great motor racing drivers in the past. We've had a formula 1 world champion & other top formula 1 driver, Indy 500 winner & 4 times Indy car champion, a few Bathurst wins, SVG is looking likely to win this years supercar championship, we have the only WRC stage win by a Kiwi or Australian, as well as the only SH production champion, we had a guy who was voted as speedway rider of the century in Ivan Major. We even have the guy who invented the modern racing motorcycle. NBA stars? One currently, 3 NBA players total. We've also made the semi finals of the world champions, which is something Australia has never done. Australia has like 10 times the basketball playing populous of NZ. The Kiwis also once destroyed a Kangaroos side containing many of your so called 'immortals' 4 - 0 in a series in the 1950's & even lead you 12, 11 in the head to head at that point. This was when the NZ team was completely amateur & the Aus team were professionals. While the Kiwis have had a number of big wins of full strength Kangaroos sides in recent years. Truth is, we shouldn't even be able to compete with you in League when you have a player base 20 times the size of ours.

It does make me wonder though, League in Australia has a massive player base of around 500K. Surely there's still a lot of talented League players who fall through the cracks & would jump at the chance of playing professional Rugby Union. Why doesn't it appear that Australian Rugby is scouting League players at all? They only seem to bring in ones who have already established themselves in professional Rugby League. Particular when NRL scouts steal a great number of Aus, NZ, & Pacific Island Union talent, it seems a travesty that the favour is not being returned.

Although it appears to be dying a slow death & football is pushing it out more & more with the current success of their national team, Union was & still is considered the national sport of Wales. Historically, the Welsh are arguably even more passionate about Rugby than NZ. Graham Henry, who coached in both Wales & NZ even argues that it's the only place more passionate about Rugby than NZ.

Australia has around 500K registered Rugby League players, NZ has 20K. Hardly a fair contest is it mate? While copying your excuses, League is semi national sport in Australia, while it's a minor one in NZ. The fact that we can compete with you at all in Rugby League is quite astonishing to be fair. Also, there's only been 8 Rugby Union world cups total, & the Wallabies got lucky in that it started just before their golden period. The Wallabies were considered a weak team for most of history, bar the late 80's & 90's. The League world cup has been going since at leas the 60's even though League has never been as competitive as Union. 11 titles also isn't that astounding when you factor in that there's only one other nation in the world that has a pro comp in England, & they only have half the player base of Australia in a country (meaning England) with more than twice the population. NZ sits about 9th in player base in Union, & is not as rich as the Northern Hemisphere nations & SA.

Um no we are not shocked, because you've been using it as an excuse for 15 years. lets put it this way, Australia & NZ compete in a number of sporta, NZ are competitive in just about every one of these sports. In all these sports bar Rugby, Australia has 5 to 10 times the player base of NZ. Money invested into these sports also dwarfs NZ. The only exception is Rugby, but even then, Australia still has more senior male players than NZ. In fact, NZ only sits about 9th in the world for Rugby Union player base. I think that sometimes people forget that NZ is a country of 4.5 million, if we were a big country & we only played Rugby, then these articles would be fair. But we're a small sporting mad country & play a number of sports, team & individual. One great example is that there are more registered football players than Rugby players in NZ, now that might actually shock you, we even have 10,000 Aussie rules players. You don't win 18 medals at the Olympics, a Rugby league world cup & 4 nations titles, make a cricket world cup final & win an ICC knockout tournament, make a couple of football world cups, make the semi finals of the basketball world champs, have a number of individual world champions, have past Indy car & formula world champions & a number of great drivers, a couple of golf & tennis majors with a country of 4.5 million if you only play one sport mate. Put us up against any one of your major centres like Sydney, Brisbane, or Melbourne which all have similar populations to NZ & I guarantee we would beat you in most sports. It's like when you kicked us out of your national cricket comp because we kept winning the ODI competition.

yep as a kid then went to play union for st Edmonds and eventually became a wallaby who went to the NRL. So what was your point exactly?

wow a bit of a swipe at the end...how did you get past Scotland...?

Ricky grew up playing league

A fair bit more actually How did tonga and Fiji soccer teams go ?

Congrats on being born on the same island as some good rugby players

leader of the current V8 supercar series!!

Perry that's not quite the case. It's not "employed" by Australian rugby. Aus rugby does absolutely zero for the private school game. It just so happens that it is the part robust enough to survive without being supported.

It also because the best talent tends to stay in NZ rugby coming through. Where Aus loses a lot of the best up and coming talent.

The Wallabies have Phil Kearns, Greg Martin and Rod Kafer to give them all the advice they need . Are you saying they don't know what they're talking about?

do you want sauce on your chip lebowski

1 in 12 strike rate with a 1 to 120 player pool. Not bad.

CUW --- the reason that England is not No. 1 in Football is simple -- the EPL has very few English Born players playing in it!! There lies a big concern for England. It is a great competition and hard and even - as any team can win on its day and beat the big boys - but there are far too many foreign players - and so up and comers from England are not noted!!

The All Blacks are good. Very good. The best by FAR in the Rugby world. Indisputably so. They would be even better if they could just accept that they were the best, and not feel the need to incessantly cheat all game every game. This alone makes them hard to respect. I genuinely think that when they play fair and fast they are the most entertaining sporting spectacle in the world. I think in an alternate universe if they played the League Kangaroos on a level playing field the Kiwis would touch them up. A similar thing could be said about their fans. Just accept that you are the best team and stop trolling the world's Rugby forums. This makes you difficult to respect also. Something about respect needing to be given to be received. As far as Rugby as a national sport, it would seen it is just NZ, Wales, Georgia, and Madagascar. I reckon the AB's can beat ALL these teams. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_sport