All Blacks and statistics

If one takes a close look to the All Blacks test statistics can be more or less surprised to see what a superb record they have against any test nation. Of course, there is no single test nation with such record.

One can compare the All Blacks to others sports leaders statistics. Can we compare the All Blacks to the best NBA team? to Roger Federer?

Let's do it:

The All Blacks have played 429 games from 1903 on. Of these, 318 ended with an All Black win. That makes a 74.13% winning percentage. As of January 2008 it stands:


All Blacks Rugby 429 318 74.13%
Real Madrid Football 2402 1379 57,41%
Los Angeles Lakers Basketball 4647 2848 61,29%
Garry Kasparov Chess 1862 872 46,83%
Roger Federer Tennis 685 551 80,44%


So, as it is shown, the All Blacks are amongst the best teams in their own sports. It must be said that some sports like boxing and chess are really difficult to compare to any other sport. Chess nature makes draw a pretty common score while there can't be any draws in basketball at all. On the other hand, boxers usually compete combat after combat in a ladder-like system (i.e. facing tougher enemies every time).

I would like to point out that although Roger Federer may be seen as more successful than the All Blacks (not only because of his record, but also based on Grand Slams tournaments won compared to Rugby World Cup rating success), no team has a positive record against the All Blacks while they do have a positive record against every team. Roger Federer, on the contrary has a negative score against some players, most notably Rafael Nadal who leads 8 to 6 all time against the swiss.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is difficult to argue with such a zealous partisan but look at the Springbok record up until 1965 and you might be surprised to see that it wasn't until the 70's(I could be wrong on this) that anyone took a test series from SA yet SA did it to NZ in 19??....I think it quite funny that after the 1987 All Black RWC Championship, the Springboks claimed that there could be no World Champion in rugby unless SA participated. Things started going downhill for SA from that moment until the 95RWC. Now they are back to square 1 but maybe NZ is too, magnificent record or no...the Greeks and the Romans aren't that high and mighty now!

Anonymous said...

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sesenta y cuatro said...

Hey! thanks for the comment. according to www.nzallblacks.net in 1928 in a 4-game series held in South Africa, NZ and SA went to draw winning 2 games each.

In 1937 South Africa managed to win a series in NZ 2 to 1.

Looking for it, I think that New Zealand never managed to win a series in SA before 1992. From that year on, regular competition between these two giants has prevented any such series as those in the past.

I think that Wikipedia states correctly that prior to professionalisation SA had a positive record against every nation, including NZ.

So I don't know who defeated the Springboks in a series at SA.