One point.<\/p>\n
That is what separated South Africa and New Zealand in the 2023 Rugby World Cup final, as the Springboks went back-to-back to become the first nation to win the tournament four times.<\/p>\n
Rassie Erasmus’ world champions sit top of the rankings and have also won back-to-back Rugby Championships. They are indisputably the game’s dominant force.<\/p>\n
Their predecessors as rugby union’s supreme team were the All Blacks, who won their own back-to-back World Cups, in 2011 and 2015.<\/p>\n
The landscape may have changed and their roles may have reversed of late, but they remain the game’s most glamourous and marketable teams.<\/p>\n
And now they are poised to begin that most rare of modern phenomenons – a multi-week tour that includes a proper Test series.<\/p>\n
This year’s Rugby Championship – the southern hemisphere’s premier international competition – has been cancelled to make room for the All Blacks’ tour of South Africa, leaving Australia and Argentina to arrange their own fixtures.<\/p>\n
The first Test is on Saturday, when Dave Rennie – just three Tests into his reign as New Zealand coach – takes his side into the first of three Tests in South Africa as part of what has been dubbed the ‘Greatest Rivalry’ tour.<\/p>\n
A fourth game – not part of the official series – will also be played in Baltimore, marking the first Test between the two long-time rivals on American soil.<\/p>\n
Within an increasingly competitive sporting landscape, BBC Sport looks at why the tour is happening and what it could mean for the future of international rugby union.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One point. That is what separated South Africa and New Zealand in the 2023 Rugby World Cup final,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-571805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}