All Blacks v Wallabies: Trophy cabinet shows how far New Zealand Rugby has fallen – Gregor Paul

THREE KEY FACTS

• The Bledisloe Cup is now one of the few trophies New Zealand Rugby still holds.
• New Zealand’s rugby success has declined since 2015, with fewer world titles and trophies.
• The decline is attributed to a loss of innovation and skill development, not just financial factors.

For the last 22 years, the Bledisloe Cup has sat in New Zealand Rugby’s trophy cabinet, treasured certainly, but not always as the central token to signify the country’s general high-performance health.

For much of the period after 2003, the riches within the New Zealand Rugby (NZR) trophy cabinet were almost embarrassing and as enjoyable as it was to beat the Wallabies so often, the All Blacks knew that the endemic issues within Australian rugby slightly cheapened the value of those Bledisloe victories.

New Zealand had so many other tangible symbols of its high-performance status that it never needed to point to the continuous presence of the Bledisloe to convince a doubtful public about how the country was faring on the world stage.

In the decade between 2005 and 2015, the All Blacks won two World Cups and the Black Ferns three.

New Zealand’s Under-20 men’s team won five world titles, the men’s sevens team collected the World Series seven times and the women three.

At the end of 2015, New Zealand held both the XV-a-side World Cups, the Junior World Championship and the women’s sevens World Series crown – not to mention the Freedom Cup, the Dave Gallaher Trophy and the Hillary Shield.

The All Blacks won 87% of their tests in that decade and only twice – in 2008 and 2011 – was the World Player of the Year not a New Zealander in that period.

But the proceeding decade has seen a seemingly inexorable decline of the empire and a gradual emptying of the trophy cabinet.

The comparative numbers posted between 2016 and now tell quite the story. The All Blacks have surrendered the World Cup, unable to win it back in either 2019 or 2023.

The Under-20 team have managed just one world title in the last 10 years, the men’s sevens have only twice taken out the World Series, and while the Black Ferns won the World Cup in 2017 and 2022, their semifinal exit on the weekend was not a shock defeat.

It was symbolic of a slow but undeniable decline which has seen them slip behind both England and Canada as the women’s game’s dominant force.

The Black Ferns won 83% of their tests between 2005-2015, a figure that has dropped to 78% in the last 10 years and really, the only genuine international success story for New Zealand since 2015 has been the Black Ferns Sevens, who have won six World Series and two Olympic gold medals.

A trophy cabinet that had just about everything in it in late 2015 now only has the Bledisloe, the women’s sevens World Series, the Dave Gallaher Trophy and the Hillary Shield.

The big-ticket items have all gone – and also missing is the Rugby Championship trophy as, for the first time since 2004, the All Blacks (last year) didn’t win it in a non-World Cup year.

The snapshot of which trophies New Zealand now holds compared with 2015 is tip-of-the-iceberg stuff. The more alarming fact is that between 2005 and 2015, the country collected 20 world titles across XVs and sevens, and just 10 in the period 2016-2025.

If the Bledisloe was, therefore, once the metaphoric icing on a rather ostentatious cake, it now is the cake – one much reduced in size and elaborate touches.

This high-performance decline in the last decade does to some extent represent the inevitable field-levelling that comes with professionalisation.

Money alone can’t buy success, but it can buy access to better facilities, snare the best coaches and accelerate professional development.

But New Zealand’s decline has been disproportionately steep to be seen as purely a consequence of rival nations using their financial heft to close the gap.

Canada, after all, have had to crowdfund their World Cup campaign and NZR investment in its Teams in Black has been enough to keep it competitive in the high-performance nuclear arms race, having jumped from $54 million in 2019 to $84m last year.

What the emaciated trophy cabinet is signalling, then, is a demise in New Zealand’s rugby capital – a loss of innovation, ingenuity and skill development.

There has been no erosion in commitment or work ethic, but New Zealand used to look into the future as a rugby fraternity and design game plans and build athletes that were two to three years ahead of the market.

New Zealand was the rugby equivalent of the Steve Jobs-led Apple between 2005-2015, constantly able to dazzle with its production innovation and ability to constantly reimagine where the game was heading.

Now it’s starting to feel like it may be rewritten into history more akin to BlackBerry – an early innovator with a great product but one that ultimately couldn’t keep pace with a changing world.

And now, the Bledisloe is one of the few trophies still within NZR’s possession and it serves as the last line of defence, as it were, to the notion that New Zealand is still a credible high-performance rugby force.

The Wallabies are a much-improved team and that of itself has given the rivalry greater credibility and value, but so bereft is the cupboard that New Zealand has no choice but to treasure the Bledisloe Cup, overplay it as a health marker and hype up retaining it as a more commendable feat than it will be.

If the Bledisloe should find its way back into Australia’s possession this year, it would signify the collapse of New Zealand’s rugby empire, something which has probably already happened, but everyone can pretend hasn’t if the All Blacks can win at Eden Park.

Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand’s most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and written several books about sport.