As double world champions South Africa descend upon Cardiff today PAUL ABBANDONATO looks at where they stand among the greatest rugby teams in history
PELE or Maradona, Bjorn Borg or Roger Federer, Muhammad Ali or prime Mike Tyson – which was better out of Shane Warne’s dominant Australia side or Viv Richards’ conquering West Indies from a decade earlier?
Comparing eras, and saying who is the greatest in history, is always hard because things change so much in the world of sport.
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But it always makes for a brilliant debate. Down the pub or, in the modern age, on social media.
And so to rugby. Some pundits reckon the current South Africa side, who have won back-to-back World Cups and beaten the Lions under Rassie Erasmus, are emerging as the best team in history.
Over the top? Possibly. It’s subjective and everyone will have their own opinion. But with their fearsome Bomb Squad of replacement forwards, these Springboks have certainly ripped up the rugby template. Fair to say winless Wales one heck of a task trying to stop their march at the Principality Stadium today.
Speaking of great teams, what about Wales and their famous Class of the 1970s? Barry, Gareth, JPR, Gerald, Merv. The fact they are still fondly known by their first names says everything about the special place they hold in Welsh history.
Ah, they’d have no chance in the power-packed modern game, scorn the critics. Of course. But you can only judge great teams by how dominant they were in any particular era – and Gareth Edwards and his mates had almost a full decade of stunning success.
In any case Gareth and JPR were so powerful – and special – they would have transcended any era. Barry John wasn’t really that much smaller than Marcus Smith. And imagine Mervyn Davies, or the Pontypool front row, with modern fitness regimes and sports science as full-time professionals?
How about the greatest New Zealand sides? So many to pick from, in the professional and amateur eras.
Whisper this quietly, but England’s 2003 World Cup winners, inspired by Jonny Wilkinson, also merit a place in the conversation.
Anyway, having come up with our top 10 greatest sides, we canvassed the views of a number of players and pundits to try to put them in ascending order. It was a difficult task, but this is the verdict.
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10: FRANCE 1987-1994
It started with the Serge Blanco inspired XV who reached the first World Cup final – it finished with that rarest of feats, any side winning a Test rubber in New Zealand.
The Les Bleus Class of ‘94 ripped up the world order with a stunning 2-0 triumph achieved with a brand of rugby, a mix of raw power and Gallic flair, only the French could produce.
In between there were four Five Nations Championship triumphs.
Perhaps most memorably the era, which majestic centre Phillipe Sella transcended, was defined by three of the greatest tries seen.
First came Blanco’s thriller in the last minute of the World Cup semi-final against Australia. Next was Phillipe Saint-Andre’s one end of the field to another 1991 score against England, voted Twickenham’s Try of the Century.
Then came full-back Jean-Luc Sadourny’s beauty to secure a 23-20 Eden Park victory over New Zealand in the summer of 1994, a week after France had won 22-8 in Dunedin.
‘L’essai du bout du monde’, they called it. The try from the end of the world.
Started inside his own 22 by Saint-Andre, and brimful of bewildering passes and mesmerising dummies played out at full speed, Sadourny finishes off the bewitching move. Google the try if you get a chance. It’s very special.
So was that French team. Sella, Saint-Andre, Sadourny, Emile Ntamack and Thierry Lacroix dazzled behind, following in the footsteps of Blanco, Pierre Berbizier and Patrice Lagisquet.
Newbies Christian Califano and Oliver Merle proved warriors, like fellow forward greats who included Abdelatif Benazzi, Eric Champ and Dominique Erbani.
Midi-Olympique devoted an entire front page to Sadourny’s sizzler, with the headline ‘In a thousand years we will be talking of this try.’
Only another 970 to go, then.
9: NEW ZEALAND 1995-99
Given the stellar talent available perhaps this team, containing greats like Jonah Lomu, Andrew Mehrtens, Jeff Wilson, Zinzan Brooke, Josh Kronfeld, Ian Jones and Sean Fitzpatrick, should have been higher up the list.
That they are not is down to two implosions. First in losing the 1995 World Cup final to South Africa, having been the dominant force throughout the tournament and red-hot favourites to win. Amid claims of food poisoning and foul play, the Blacks fell 15-12 in extra time.
Then came their shock World Cup semi-final defeat to France at Twickenham four years on, losing 43-31 in what was dubbed the greatest game in World Cup history at the time.
It still might be.
Lomu burst onto the scene. Who can forget his four-try demolition of England in the 1995 semi-final at Newlands?
Yet like Johann Cruyff’s Holland of 1974, this New Zealand outfit are probably the best side never to win their World Cup.
Again like the Dutch with their Total Football, Lomu and Co lit up rugby, giving it a new global profile and tactics everyone else was keen to copy.
More often than not they blew opponents apart. Mystifyingly, the big prize eluded them.
8: SOUTH AFRICA 1995-98
Occasionally teams are about more than just results – or a game of rugby.
These Springboks united a Rainbow Nation post-apartheid, winning the World Cup on home soil and in doing so providing that iconic image of Nelson Mandela, complete with green number six jersey, handing over the trophy to Francois Pienaar.
This story was so special they made a Hollywood blockbuster out of it. Directed by Clint Eastwood, Matt Damon plays inspirational Springboks skipper Pienaar and Morgan Freeman the part of Mandela.
New Zealand, the side they overcame in the final, had been the best team. But Pienaar gave the perfect response when asked about the support from 60,000 South Africans which helped them win a dramatic Ellis Park final.
“We didn’t have 60,000 South Africans, we had 43 million South Africans,” he stated. Damon depicts the moment perfectly in the film..
South Africa went from strength to strength, embarking upon a record 17-match winning streak between August 1997 and December 1998 and smashing teams by record margins. France were thrashed France 52-10, Scotland 68-10 and Wales 96–13.
By then Gary Teichmann had replaced Pienaar as captain, with game-breaking backs Percy Montgomery, Pieter Muller and Henry Honiball emerging, but a number of World Cup winners like Os du Randt, Mark Andrews and the peerless Joost van der Westhuizen were still heavily involved.
7: AUSTRALIA 1984
They arrived for a UK tour somewhat unheralded. They departed with a Grand Slam to their name, having dazzled with mesmerising rugby, and kickstarted a Wallabies roll which saw the men in gold and green win two World Cups during the 1990s.
The tournament came three years too early for this Class of ‘84, but the young side under the guidance of Alan Jones wowed everyone with the thrill a minute nature of their run it from everywhere rugby.
The stardust backline was so good that fly-half legend Michael Lynagh had to play centre. Mark Ella, he of the magical feet and wonderful dummies, ran the show at No.10 and scored a try in every Test. Nick Farr-Jones was inside him at scrum-half, Andrew Slack and Roger Gould outside. Plus, of course, the great David Campese, bringing instinct, awareness and a swashbuckling free spirit style that was rarely seen at the time.
Up front Simon Poidevin, Steve Tuynman and David Codey pointed the way for future forward play – a mix of power and aggression, combined with flair, speed and elegance.
These free-flowing Wallabies beat England 19-3, Ireland 16-9, Wales 28-9 and Scotland 37-12, plus a strong Barbarians side in the unofficial fifth Test.
They entertained wherever they went, the first and only Australia side in history to achieve the Grand Slam. More significantly, in a country where rugby league and Aussie Rules dominated, Jones’ Wallabies put down the foundations for their 1991 and 1999 World Cup triumphs.
6: ENGLAND 2003
They were about so much more than Jonny Wilkinson’s drop goal to win the World Cup in Sydney.
Between losing to South Africa in the quarter-finals four years earlier, and that Wilkinson moment, Sir Clive Woodward’s England won 42 out of 47 Tests matches played.
Across a four-year World Cup cycle it is the highest win ratio of any side other than Dan Carter’s New Zealand Class a decade on. The success included an unprecedented 12-match winning streak against the southern hemisphere big three of New Zealand, South Africa and Australia.
Indeed, the seeds for the World Cup were sown earlier that summer in 2003 when England toured down under and achieved Sir Clive Wodward’s demand of beating the big teams in their own backyard.
Despite being reduced to 13 men, when Neil Back and Lawrence Dallaglio were shown yellow cards, England prevailed 15-13 against New Zealand in Wellington, then defeated Australia 25-14 in Melbourne.
Woodward created a formidable unit. Richard Hill, Dallaglio and Back made up a perfectly formed back-row, Martin Johnson was a captain colossus, Trevor Woodman, Steve Tompson and Phil Vickery gave ground to no-one in the front row, Jason Robinson dazzled behind, Will Greenwood oozed class.
And knitting everything together, of course, was Wilkinson. Lethal from the tee, he controlled matches brilliantly and remains perhaps the finest tackling fly-half the game has known.
The only blot on England’s copybook were unexpected Grand Slam losses to Scotland in 2000 and Ireland the following year. They had also been defeated by Wales at Wembley in 1999.
Woodward’s men had been crushing everyone else, making their last-gasp failures hard to comprehend. However, they finally got over the Grand Slam line with a 42-6 Dublin thumping of Ireland in 2003.
Sydney eight months on proved to be the peak as the team very quickly fell apart, England losing six of the 11 games played during 2004. It was a sharp decline, but they had already made history.
5: WALES 1970s
There was no World Cup to play for back then, while there were also a couple of excruciatingly close defeats to New Zealand, but Wales through the ‘70s were more than just a rugby team.
They defined a nation. Almost an entire decade of success, filled with scintillating tries, mean that even half a century on the legends from yesteryear are still revered – Gareth, Barry, Gerald, JPR. Then we had Merv the Swerve, JJ, Benny, and of course the Pontypool front row.
What a line-up. Wales were like the Harlem Globetrotters in how they played their rugby. Or the Brazil 1970 World Cup winners of Pele, Jairzinho and Rivelino might be a more apt analogy. A freakish generation of talent who didn’t just win, they also enthralled and became every neutral’s favourite other side to watch.
This Wales team was a potent cocktail. A fearsome pack of forwards capable of mixing it with the best; a dazzling array of backs who just – well dazzled pretty much every time they took to the field.
There was no Warrenball bish-bash-bosh circa 2008-19. This Wales team won playing the right way, using space and pace and letting the ball do the work rather than just trying to crash through opponents.
Graham Price, part of the legendary Pontypool front row also made up of Bobby Windsor and Charlie Faulkner, tells a story about reading a US magazine article to pass the time on tour.
“They ran a worldwide poll for the greatest sports team in history,” he recounts. “Chicago Bulls came first, Michael Jordan’s side. Next was the Australian cricket team of Shane Warne. Pele’s Brazil were third and we were fourth, ahead of the McLaren Formula One team.
“So we’re not just talking rugby sides here, but the finest sports teams the world has seen.”
Not that Wales quite make the top three on our rugby list, however. But they come very close.
Six outright Five Nations titles and three Grand Slams bears dividend to how good they were, despite playing against one of the finest, and certainly fiercest, France sides we have known.
At one point there was a run of just three losses in 22 matches. There were nine successive Championship victories.
We didn’t have five point tries back then, so some of the results were absolute hammerings – England 20-4 and 22-6, Ireland 32-4, Scotland 28-6, Australia 28-3.
Two wins over France particularly stand out. Gareth Edwards and Barry John scoring tries to clinch the 1971 Grand Slam and the 1978 clean sweep over Les Bleus in Cardiff.
Sadly that one signalled the end for Gareth Edwards and other greats from the era.
But what memories they gave us.
4: SOUTH AFRICA 2019 TO CURRENT DAY
Rugby has never seen anything quite like the Springboks outfit Wales take on today. Physicality, maturity, depth.
Sending on the Bomb Squad, almost an entire new pack of forwards equally as good as the players who have just been replaced, creates an awesome second-half power other teams simply cannot stop.
The opposition know what’s coming. They are helpless to do anything about it.
It was Eddie Jones who first used the words ‘finishers’ and ‘starters’ about his England players. The phrases are far more apt for Rassie Erasmus’ South Africa.
Are Ox Nche, Bongi Mbonambi and Wilco Louw the first-choice front-row unit, or is it actually Gerhard Steenekamp, Malcolm Marx and Vincent Koch? Tendai ‘The Beast’ Mtawarira, Steven Kitshoff, Frans Malherbe and Thomas du Toit have been pretty awesome too amid back-to-back World Cup triumphs.
Forget being just a great second-row, Eben Etzebeth is one of the finest rugby players in history full stop. Franco Mostert, RG Snyman or Lood de Jager? One to start with him, another part of the Bomb Squad.
Pieter-Steph du Toit has been among the world’s best forwards for a number of years, Siya Kolisi is a wonderful leader, No.10 Handre Pollard was the highest paid star on the planet for a reason. Cheslin Kolbe would have been a great in any era, bringing stardust to the wing. The centres are formidable.
Under the innovative Erasmus these Springboks have redefined rugby. Yes it’s about the grunt up front, but they have also developed a class game behind.
A bit like Germany used to be in football, South Africa peak when it matters. A tournament team.
That they are not even higher on this list is because their record in between World Cups is nothing to particularly shout home about.
After triumphing in 2019 they lost 10 of their next 26 matches.
But in World Cup year they know how to get the job done. Despite falling to New Zealand in the first game of the 2019 tournament, the Springboks bounced back to reach the final and destroy Eddie Jones’ England.
Same again in 2023, an early pool stage loss to Ireland. Back came the Boks again, edging past hosts France 29-28, England 16-15 in the last four and New Zealand 12-11 in the final.
Narrow one point victories are hardly the sign of a dominant force, like other teams on this list, but it does demonstrate these Springboks do possess the knack of winning tight encounters when it matters. Mainly as a result of the set-piece and breakdown ballast their Bomb Squad bring.
Don’t bet against a hat-trick of World Cup wins come 2027. If so, maybe the current Springboks will one day be regarded as the greatest of the lot.
3: NEW ZEALAND 2011-2015
The first team to win back-to-back World Cups, the side led by first Graham Henry, then Steve Hansen, had a run which saw them lose just three times in 71 Test matches.
For avoidance of doubt, that is one highly impressive record. Credit then to Australia in Sydney, South Africa at Ellis Park and England at Twickenham who somehow managed to break the New Zealand world rugby stranglehold.
Mind, over that same period these Blacks also beat the Wallabies 13 times, Springboks on nine occasions and Red Rose in five matches. Ample revenge, then.
In Dan Carter and Richie McCaw they possessed perhaps the two greatest players of the professional era, although Antoine Dupont is fast closing them down.
Carter and McCaw were the standout stars, but everywhere you looked there was further world class talent around them. Ma’a Nonu and Conrad Smith in the centre, Ben Smith and Julian Savea as tryscorers, Aaron Smith pulling the strings at scrum-half. Kieran Read and Jerome Kaino supported McCaw in the back row, Brodie Rettalick and Sam Whitelock were colossal at lock, so too the front row mix.
After beating France 8-7 in a tense 2011 World Cup final, four years on, and with Carter utterly supreme, New Zealand blew away Australia 34-17.
The Wallabies team that day boasted a backline of Israel Folau, Adam Ashley-Cooper, Tevita Kuridrani, Matt Giteau, Drew Mitchell, Bernard Foley and Will Genia, while David Pocock and Michael Hooper were in the back-row.
Match referee Nigel Owens saw the action up close and says: “In any other final, that Australia team would have been good enough to win the World Cup. Not that day, against that formidable New Zealand side.”
Only a flood of retirements saw New Zealand finally loosen their grip.
2: NEW ZEALAND 1987-1990
A team ahead of its time.
You could transport these first World Cup winners from 37 years ago into the modern game and they would still probably give South Africa a run for their money.
In an amateur age these Blacks were professional in everything but name. Their fitness levels, preparation and physicality were on a different planet to every other side they faced.
They absolutely blew opponents apart. Their matches were rarely close.
In conquering the world in 1987 New Zealand scored a whopping 43 tries in just six games. Everyone was thrashed – Italy 70-6, Fiji 74-13, Argentina 46-15, Scotland 30-3, Wales 49-6 in the semi-finals and France 29-9 in the final.
It was part of a record 23-match unbeaten streak over a three-year period. No-one could cope with the power generated up front by the likes of Michael Jones, Buck Shelford, Gary Whetton and Sean Fitzpatrick, men who combined brutal forward power with quick feet and sleight of hand. True modern forwards.
John Kirwan and John Gallagher were unstoppable try scorers, Joe Stanley provided class inside them, David Kirk and Grant Fox the play-making skills from half-back..
You can only judge sides on how dominant they are in any particular era. These Blacks were utterly ruthless. Nobody could even get close to them.
1: LIONS 1971-74
It’s hard to look beyond these best of Britain and Ireland, but very much dominated by Welsh legends, as rugby’s number one.
They beat New Zealand for the only time in history; three years after many of the same players were also part of The Invincibles’ unbeaten tour to South Africa.
In 1971 the Lions possessed what must be the greatest backline any rugby team has fielded: JPR Williams, Gerald Davies, John Dawes (capt), Mike Gibson, David Duckham, Barry John and Gareth Edwards.
It is an indication of just how special a player BJ was that even amid that truly stardust company he was still the standout performer, dubbed ‘The King’ for his record-breaking exploits in the Lions’ 2-1 triumph.
New Zealand changed their entire rugby philosophy on the back of what BJ and his team-mates did to them that year, realising free-flowing, pass and move, daring rugby was the way to go.
The Lions were given freedom to strut their stuff by a visionary, some would say genius of a coach in Carwyn James. The greatest Welsh rugby mind never to coach Wales. A travesty.
In 1974 Carwyn had gone. Former Ireland prop Syd Millar was the man in charge, with the great Willie John McBride having taken over the captaincy from Dawes.
The outcome was just the same.
This time the Lions possessed what many consider among the greatest forward packs in history, with 1971 veterans Willie John, Mervyn Davies, Ian McLauchlan, Gordon Brown and Fergus Slattery supported by newcomers Bobby Windsor, Roger Uttley and Fran Cotton
Barry John, Gerald Davies and Irish genius Mike Gibson were missing. So enter Phil Bennett as Edwards’ new half-back partner, the lethal try threat of speedster JJ Williams on the wing, plus the calm authority of Andy Irvine at the back to bring razzle-dazzle to a team already possessing a huge set-piece and dynamic breakaway forwards.
Three years earlier New Zealand provincial teams tried to rough up the Lions. To no avail. This time, amid some brutal Test matches, the Lions fought fire with fire with their famous ‘99’ call, whereupon the entire team piled in together upon the slightest sign of Springbok violence or intimidation.
In 1971 the Lions lost just one game of 25 played in New Zealand, the second Test. They had already won the first 9-3, then won a huge Auckland showdown 13-3 thanks to tries from Barry John and Gerald Davies.
They drew the fourth Test 14-14, with JPR Williams shocking even his team-mates with a drop goal from 45 metres – the only one he scored in his entire career.
In 1974 it was 22 matches unbeaten. The first Test was won 12-3, Bennett and Edwards scoring the points. The second was more one sided, JJ Williams and Bennett among the tryscorers in a 28-9 thumping.
JJ scored two more in the 26-9 third Test victory, while the fourth game was drawn 13-13.
Which Lions team was better? That’s another debate of its own. JPR once said the 1971 backline couldn’t be bettered, but he felt the Class of ‘74 might just have the edge because of a slightly superior pack and the players from three years earlier being more experienced.
But that’s splitting hairs because winning in New Zealand has proven more difficult than winning in South Africa.
Either way, even the current double world champion Springboks will have to go some still to eclipse these 1970s Lions as rugby’s greatest.
