It certainly helps playing that brand of football and having the belief that it is not over till it is over.” “It makes it easier to go out and score quick tries if needed. “The way we play rugby, it is a more expansive game than many other teams,” says Beauden Barrett, the 26-year-old New Zealander who was named world player of the year in November. So what makes the All Blacks such world-beaters - and can anything challenge their success? The omens aren’t good for the Lions, who have not won a series against the New Zealand team since 1971.
Over the next two weeks they will play a three-match Test series against the British and Irish Lions, a squad picked from the best players in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Many New Zealand fans go to rugby matches wondering not whether their team will win, but rather by how much.
They have claimed three World Cups and won more than three-quarters of the matches they have played in their 125-year history, more than any major national sports team. The All Blacks are the most successful sports franchise in history, achieving a better win ratio than Brazil in football or Australia in cricket.
I became fascinated with discovering the team’s winning formula. It was an emotion bred from the pain of watching successive defeats of my beloved Ireland from the terraces of Dublin’s Lansdowne Road, and the envy of seeing New Zealand, a country of 4.5 million people, somehow nurture generations of world-beating players and dominate a sport.Īt a certain point, the resentment turned into something else. For most of my life I hated the All Blacks.
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