A popular question is who I rate as the greatest team since rugby went professional in 1996. For me, it is Richie McCaw’s back-to-back All Blacks World Cup winners of 2011 and 2015.
Consistency in results, as good away from home as at home, and dominant for a period like no other team in the history of the sport.
Siya Kolisi’s World Cup winners of 2019 and 2023 are second to McCaw’s maestros because in between World Cups, they could not transfer the World Cup winning mentality into a ruthlessness of sustained dominance.
Kolisi’s World Cup winners could make an argument for the greatest World Cup-winning squad, based on two successive away World Cup titles, in Japan in 2019 and in France in 2023.
McCaw’s All Blacks won at home in 2011 and in England in 2015.
Kolisi’s winners also impressed with 33 from 46 wins from their 2019 World Cup opening round defeat against the All Blacks to their 2023 World Cup final win against the All Blacks.
McCaw’s Test career statistics will never be matched.
There have been some incredible international teams in the professional era, but many of them have enjoyed one magnificent year, only to falter at World Cups or fade into the third year of those four year cycles in between World Cups.
Martin Johnson’s 2000-2003 England World Cup winners were the best in the early 2000s and Nick Mallett’s Springboks squad of 1997/98 that went unbeaten in 17 Tests (the first of which was won in Carel du Plessis’s last Test as Bok coach) was filled with giants of the game. Individually, there was a celebration of great players and collectively they just didn’t know how to lose for a year.
Sean Fitzpatrick’s All Blacks of 1996 and 1997 were proper, including a historic first-ever series win in South Africa. Graham Henry’s All Blacks of 2005 and 2006 dominated rugby’s world order.
John Smit’s 2009 Springboks, for one year, hinted at being the greatest in beating the British & Irish Lions in a series win and taming the All Blacks three times in succession, including a title-winning victory in New Zealand.
Eddie Jones’s England won 18 in succession and Andy Farrell’s Ireland vintage historically won a three-Test series in New Zealand in 2022. Fabian Galthie’s France, in the past three seasons, were also the best French team, in consistency and results, in the country’s professional era.
John Eales’s 1999 World Cup-winning Wallabies were also special and the pick of the Wallabies Test teams since 1996.
But nothing compares, in absolute dominance, to those All Blacks who won back-to-back World Cups in 2011 and 2015. Nothing also compares to McCaw, as the Commander-in-Chief and Carter as his General.
McCaw’s Test career statistics will never be matched. He lost 15 and drew two Tests in 148. In a 15-year All Blacks international career, he lost just 10% of his Tests. He lost two in 61 in New Zealand and played 87 away from home, winning 72 and drawing two.
He also led the All Blacks of 2013 to 14 successive Tests wins, seven at home and seven away from home. It is the only time in professionalism that a Test nation has not lost a match in a calendar year. The All Blacks beat France (four times), Australia (three), South Africa (two), Argentina (two), Japan, England and Ireland for those 14 wins.
Carter, the highest points scorer in rugby history, won 99 and drew one of his 112 Tests. Carter won 15 in 19 Tests against the Boks and won five in seven times in South Africa.
McCaw won nine Tests against the Springboks in South Africa, and on his retirement the Springboks in the history of the game had won nine Tests in New Zealand. In 2018, they added a 10th with the 36-34 win in Wellington.
What defined the McCaw/Carter All Blacks is that it didn’t matter where they played or who they played, they invariably won.
Kolisi’s Boks, with 33 wins in 46 at 71.7%, are comfortably the next best over a four-year period in between winning World Cups and it is the kind of return that ordinarily would rank them No 1, but for the extraordinary achievement of McCaw’s All Blacks.
It was the sustained periods of winning that were incomparable. In Tests, from the first in 2010 to the last in 2016, the All Blacks won nine in succession, then lost one, won seven in succession, then lost two, won 16 in succession and drew one, won three in a row and drew one, won 17 in succession and drew one, won four and lost one, won eight and lost one, won a then record-breaking 18 on the trot and lost one and signed off with three wins in the northern hemisphere, including Ireland in Dublin and France in Paris.
The back-to-back World Cup title-winning cycle between the tournament opener in 2011 and the final in 2015, saw McCaw’s All Blacks lose three and draw two in 61 Tests. Translated, they lost less than 5% of their Test matches in five years and played half of them away from home. The win percentage was always in the 90s.
The sport will continue to produce great teams, but none will ever produce such dominance over a five-to-seven-year period.
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