All Blacks winning World Cup Twitter battle

Keven Mealamu leads the All Blacks haka. Photo / Getty

On the eve of the Rugby World Cup, the All Blacks are winning the Twitter battle.

The All Blacks are the defending World Cup champions, the number one side in rugby and the most popular team, according on Twitter.

The World Cup favourites lead all 20 teams in the number of fans with 473,000 following the @allblacks account since it was created in March 2009.

Second on the list is 2015 World Cup hosts England with 435,000 followers. The England Rugby Union was a bit slower to get onto Twitter, launching their official account in October 2010.

However, All Blacks second-five Sonny Bill Williams (@SonnyBWilliams) actually has more followers for his own account than the England team with 450,000, while first-five Dan Carter (@DanCarter) is not that far behind with 432,000.

Former Ireland international Brian O'Driscoll (@BrianODriscoll) has the most Twitter followers than any rugby player with 612,710. The Ireland official account has 356,000.

Australian first-five Quade Cooper (@QuadeCooper) who has 456,504 followers while the official Wallabies account has 147,000 and Springboks winger Bryan Habana (@BryanHabana) has 312,000 followers compared to the official South Africa account which has 291,000.

At the other end of the scale, Namibia have just 1,559 followers of their official team account as six nations have less than 10,000, 27 days out from the tournament.

World Rugby (@worldrugby) has 101,000 followers while @rugbyworldcup has @rugbyworldcup has 388,000.

Official rugby Twitter accounts
New Zealand (@allblacks) 473,000
England (@englandrugby) 435,000
Ireland (@IrishRugby) 356,000
South Africa (@springboks) 291,000
Wales (@welshrugbyunion) 208,000
Australia (@wallabies) 147,000
Scotland (@scotlandteam) 111,000
Argentina (@unionargentina) 92,000
France (@FFRugby) 79,500
Italy (@federugby) 73,000
USA (@usarugby) 56,300
Canada (@rugbycanada) 39,400
Fiji (@fijirugby) 33,300
Samoa (@manusamoa) 10,300
Uruguay (@rugbyuruguay) 6,500
Japan (@jrfurugby) 4,186
Romania (@rugbyromania) 4,080
Georgia (@georgiarugby) 2,270
Tonga (@officialTongaRU) 1,800
Namibia (@rugbynamibia) 1,559