All Blacks’ success cannot mask the fact that,as players have moved to titanic-money northern hemisphere club deals, so international standards have fallenNew Zealand won the Rugby Championship final weekend. Again. They did so with one-third of their matches still to be played. Again. The final time the All Blacks failed to win the title in a non-World Cup year was 2009 when South Africa were on the tall of a successful Lions series.
Since then, and excluding 2011 and 2015 when New Zealand mixed and matched with the World Cup in intellect,they have lost one match in six campaigns, to a long-range penalty by Pat Lambie one minute from the end against South Africa in 2014.
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Source: guardian.co.uk