Major honours
The All Blacks are often cited as holding the highest career win percentage of any team in any professional sport, rugby or otherwise. The New Zealand Rugby Football Union was founded in 1892, the team played its first Test against Australia in 1903, and the aura built around the black jersey and the haka was cemented on the 1905 Originals tour of Britain, which finished 34 wins from 35 matches. New Zealand has won the World Cup three times — the inaugural 1987 tournament, its home tournament in 2011, and the 2015 final at Twickenham — and reached the semifinal in nine of the ten tournaments held since 1987. The lone exception, a quarterfinal exit in 2007, is still remembered in New Zealand as a national wound. At Eden Park in Auckland, the All Blacks have gone unbeaten in Tests for more than 30 years since a 1994 loss to France, and Sam Whitlock, who retired in 2023, holds the team's cap record with 153. That a country of just five million sustains this dominance through a single development pipeline running from provincial rugby (the NPC) up through Super Rugby franchises remains one of the most studied questions in world rugby.
Record comparison
Bars are scaled to the strongest team in this list.
Club legends
Rivalry
The rivalry with South Africa, dating to their first series in 1921, is the oldest and fiercest in the sport, and the two teams kept meeting on the World Cup stage all the way through the 2023 final. Against Australia, New Zealand contests the Bledisloe Cup every year, a trophy established in 1931.