THE ALL BLACKS: POWER, EFFORT, RESPECT AND VICTORY

The All Blacks' Logo

Today, The Grandma is very excited because The All Blacks have invited her and her friends to participate in their training. Since The Grandma watched a match of U.E. Santboiana than she became a great fan of rugby although it's impossible to her to understand the rules and the meaning of this interesting sport.

She has arrived to the conclusion that the most important of rugby is to advance and this is the reason because of she is so interested in this sport, because it's a metaphor of live: you always must advance. Advance in your life, in your studies, in your work, in your knowledge, in your experiences... Advancing is the secret to improve in all things that you want to do.

During the travel from Wellington to Auckland, The Grandma has read a new chapter of Rosemary Border's Ghost Stories and she has studied a new lesson of her First Certificate Language Practice manual (Grammar 13).

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The New Zealand national rugby union team, called the All Blacks, represents New Zealand in men's rugby union, which is known as the country's national sport. The team has won the last two Rugby World Cups, in 2011 and 2015, as well as the inaugural tournament in 1987.

They have a 77% winning record in test match rugby, and are the only international side with a winning record against every opponent. Since their international debut in 1903, they have lost to only six of the 19 nations they have played in test matches. Since the introduction of the World Rugby Rankings in 2003, New Zealand has held the number one ranking longer than all other teams combined. The All Blacks jointly hold the record for the most consecutive test match wins for a tier one ranked nation, along with England.

The All Blacks won the Rugby World Cup in 2011

New Zealand competes with Argentina, Australia and South Africa in The Rugby Championship. The All Blacks have won the trophy fifteen times in the competition's twenty-two-year history.

New Zealand have completed a Grand Slam tour four times  1978, 2005, 2008 and 2010. The All Blacks have been named the World Rugby Team of the Year ten times since the award was created in 2001, and an All Black has won the World Rugby Player of the Year award ten times over the same period. Fifteen former All Blacks have been inducted into the International Rugby Hall of Fame.

More information: All Blacks

The team's first match was in 1884, and their first international test match was in 1903 against Australia in Sydney. The following year, they hosted their first ever home test, a match against a British Isles side in Wellington. This was followed by a 34-game, including  5 tests, tour of Europe and North America in 1905, where the team suffered only one defeat, their first ever test loss, against Wales.

New Zealand's early uniforms consisted of a black jersey with a silver fern and white knickerbockers. By the 1905 tour, they were wearing all black, except for the silver fern, and the name All Blacks dates from this time. The team perform a haka, a Māori challenge or posture dance, before each match. The haka has traditionally been Te Rauparaha's Ka Mate, although since 2005 Kapa o Pango has also been performed.

Rugby union, almost universally referred to only as rugby in New Zealand, was introduced to New Zealand by Charles Monro in 1870; Monro discovered the sport while completing his studies at Christ's College, Finchley, England.

The All Blacks' haka in 1932

The first recorded game in New Zealand took place in May 1870 in Nelson between the Nelson club and Nelson College.

The first provincial union, the Canterbury Rugby Football Union, was formed in 1879, and in 1882 New Zealand's first internationals were played when New South Wales (NSW) toured the country. NSW did not face a New Zealand representative team but played seven provincial sides, the tourists won four games and lost three. Two years later the first New Zealand team to travel overseas toured New South Wales; where New Zealand won all eight of their games.

A privately organised British team, which later became the British and Irish Lions, toured New Zealand in 1888. No test matches were played, and the side only played provincial sides. The British players were drawn mainly from Northern England, but there were representatives from Wales and Scotland.

More information: Rugby Museum

International rugby was suspended during the First World War, but a New Zealand Services team did compete in inter-services competition known as the King's Cup. After their departure from Europe the side toured South Africa before their return to New Zealand, and that tour paved the way for a South African team to tour New Zealand in 1921. 

The Springboks, as the South African team is known, played New Zealand in a test series that ended all square. New Zealand conducted a return tour to South Africa in 1928, and the test series was again drawn; both teams winning two tests each.

For the 1960 All Blacks tour of South Africa, the South African authorities insisted that Maori players be excluded from the team.

The All Blacks' haka nowadays

The subsequent controversy led to the New Zealand Rugby Union refusing any other tour for the following 10 years until the 1970 tour, when Maori players were accepted as honorary whites.

The 1976 All Blacks tour of apartheid South Africa generated much controversy and led to the boycott of the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal by 33 African nations after the IOC refused to ban the team.  

New Zealand again failed to win the test series in South Africa: they did not do so until 1996, after the fall of apartheid and the introduction of neutral referees. The 1976 tour contributed to the Gleneagles Agreement being adopted by the Commonwealth Heads of State in 1977.

More information: New Zealand Rugby

The professional era in rugby union began in 1995, spurred by creation of the SANZAR group, a combination of South Africa, New Zealand and Australia which was formed with the purpose of selling broadcast rights for two new competitions, the domestic Super 12 competition and the Tri-Nations. The first Tri-Nations was contested in 1996, with New Zealand winning all four of their tests to take the trophy.

The All Blacks perform a haka, Māori challenge, before each international match. The haka has been closely associated with New Zealand rugby ever since a tour of Australia and the United Kingdom by the 1888–89 New Zealand Native football team, though the New Zealand team that toured New South Wales in 1884 may also have performed a haka.

More information: 100% Pure New Zealand

The haka reminds us of the inherent fragility of life. 

How little time is given to each of us. And how much we still have to do. It reminds us: This is our time.

James Kerr