Why tiny New Zealand dominates rugby

Thanks for watching everyone! I wanted to mention a small mistake I made: Ireland's rugby team represents both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland (which is part of the U.K.). In other words, the whole island. I mistakenly excluded Northern Ireland on the maps. Thanks again to everyone that caught that! - Sam

As a South African, the All Blacks' dominance in rugby is always a conversation starter with New Zealanders.

Small note - Ireland's rugby team is all-island, i.e. there is no seperate team for Northern Ireland and the Republic! Given the success of the team over the last few years, its probably a policy we should be pushing in other sports!

I was teaching Phys Ed at a high school in Auckland when we had a visit by a group of teachers from the USA. Their "Coach" as they call their Phys Ed teacher, was amazed we had six rugby teams, from the elite 1st XV down to the lowly 6th fifteen. When he asked me why we had six teams I said because we don't have enough kids who want to play to have a seventh team. He was taken aback by this and said in the USA there is only one school team for any sport, if you don't make the team you're a spectator. In New Zealand any kid who wants to play a sport will find a place in a team regardless of their ability. It's a good system, there have been a few people who stated in a second or third tier team who went on to club sport after leaving school and ended up at the top of their game. Its not unusual in New Zealand to see several hundred kids playing in organised competition or attending practice on drizzly evenings after school.

Another thing to keep in mind is the code splitting between rugby union and rugby league. NZ has a much stronger preference for union while other countries, notably Australia, have a preference for league

You did miss the Pacific island factor. The natural talent of Samoans, Tongan and Fijians and their availability for All Black teams.

I used to live in New Zealand and seeing the investment and level of care they put into their rugby programmes shows why they are so dominant. Truly performed at the highest level and world class.

Massive kudos for including the Chatam Islands in the map of New Zealand. I don't think I've ever seen media made outside New Zealand recognise that they are part of New Zealand!

As a New Zealander it shocks people when I tell them that basically any Pakeha (New Zealand-European) or Māori person in New Zealand almost always has had some close relative who played for the All Blacks. Even while living in a small town of people, I have still had friends who’s parents or grandparents were captains of the All Blacks and personally I had a great uncle who played from 1935-1936 before the War. Just goes to show just how amazingly strong our rugby spirit and culture is here in New Zealand!

I think it is worth mentioning that New Zealand (and also Australia) attracts a lot players from countries in the Pacific such as the Samoa, Tonga or Fiji where rugby is also the most popular sport. They have better infrastructures and also better pay for those players so the pool of talents is even bigger. You can find a good number of players in the All Blacks and in the Wallabies who chose to play for them instead of their native pacific nation. I saw a good documentary on the Samoan rugby federation where players said that the only reason you play for Samoa is for the love of the country and nothing else.

As someone from New Zealand I appreciate the video very much ! Love the recognition from the states !

The video missed out an entire level of rugby, between high school and Super Rugby is Provincial Rugby. This sees players playing for the province in which they live, usually in which they have lived their whole life. Players are invested in their province for that reason as well as the hope that they will from there secure contracts to play Super Rugby .

I think making another video about the Springboks (the All Blacks biggest rivals) would be awesome as their story is one of the great stories in the world of rugby

Ireland has been among the top ranked teams for many years now, with a similar population to New Zealand (although with less cultural focus on the game), but we'd be happy just to finally make it past the quarter finals of the world cup, which we have never done despite being pretty strong in other tournaments.

I'm from New Zealand, it definitely feels like the game is on a downwards trajectory. Struggling attendance to the super rugby where stadiums used to be full and NZ Rugby has called for a full overhaul of management. Football is on the rise, which I think can be seen by the attendance to the women's world cup. More kids play football now than rugby as the game is just more inclusive and accessible. But I'm still extremely proud of rugby heritage!

Wow, nice video! Im rugby player and coach myself, from Georgia. We have our own cool story about how much rugby gave Georgia in 90s, when everything else was bad, 3 wars, we had only poverty and misery. Only rugby was giving us victories, some happiness and feeling pride , and it made rugby special for georgians. So much special, that for about 15/10 years ago, Georgian government invested into rugby development and started building modern rugby stadiums, with full packages like training centers, meeting holes, relaxing rooms, small hotels and more. More than 12 stadiums/rugby bases have been built until now, more are under construction and more under planning.. Rugby is played/traind at schools now and in some cases, at kindergartens. Rugby is growing like nothing before!

A more interesting story is the financial viability of the sport at the professional level. Many top tier clubs in England, Wales, South Africa Australia and NZ struggle to stay afloat in a world dominated by pro sports. Namely football. Clubs constantly have to fold, restructure, cheat salary caps and even commit fraud to stay alive.

When I think of New Zealand rugby, Tony Johnson is always my inner monologue. What a guy, as iconic as Peter Drury for sure.

Great video!! As a Canadian who has moved to NZ on a work visa I can say it’s been pretty amazing to see how passionate the kiwis are about Rugby. We’ve attended 3 Super Rugby games and saw an All Blacks game in Dunedin a month ago as well. The All Blacks experience in Auckland was so cool and though it wasn’t very fancy, the NZ sports hall of fame in Dunedin was great to see too, lots of Rugby history to be shared and this video did a really nice job of doing that. I’ve subscribed. Cheers!

The kids that play from young start to eat, shit and breath rugby here in New Zealand... think of it as how the UK love soccer/ football