The Bledisloe Cup Explained
The Bledisloe Cup in full: the trophy Lord Bledisloe donated, the 1931 argument nobody has settled, how it is won, and the long New Zealand run.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Rivalries18 min read
- Trophy donated by
- Lord Bledisloe, Governor-General of New Zealand
- First contested
- 1931 or 1932, depending on which union you ask
- Australia's titles
- Twelve, most recently in 2002
- New Zealand's current run
- Every year from 2003 to 2025
- Matches played
- About 160 to the end of 2025
- Record crowd
- 109,874 at Stadium Australia, 15 July 2000
- Australia's last win in the fixture
- 24-22 at Suncorp Stadium, 7 November 2020
- Australia's last win at Eden Park
- 1986
Bledisloe cup is the search that produces the least comfortable answer in Australian sport. The trophy has been contested between the Wallabies and the All Blacks since the early 1930s, Australia have won it twelve times, and they last held it in 2002. New Zealand have held it in every one of the twenty-three calendar years since.
That is the headline, and everything else on this page is context for it: how the trophy came to exist, why the retention rule matters more than the results in some years, what the format has been at various times, the matches that are still argued about, and what Australia would actually need to do to win it back.
The Wallabies' wider history and all-time records are on the Wallabies page, and their World Cup campaigns are on the Rugby World Cup page. This page is about one fixture.
- 23Consecutive years held by New Zealand
- 12Australian titles, all time
- 109874Record crowd, Sydney 2000
- 40Years since Australia last won at Eden Park
Figures to the end of the 2025 series. The consecutive-years count is stated in calendar years because published counts of series differ by one, depending on whether the disputed 1931 match is included.
The trophy and the man who gave it
Charles Bathurst, the first Viscount Bledisloe, was Governor-General of New Zealand from 1930 to 1935. He donated a large silver cup for competition between the Australian and New Zealand national teams, and it has carried his name since.
It is a physical object of some size, which matters more than it sounds, because it is one of the few trophies in either country that photographs well enough to have become a shorthand for the fixture itself. Australian sports pages have been running pictures of an empty Bledisloe Cup cabinet for two decades.
The trophy was also, at some point between the 1930s and the post-war period, lost. The usual account is that it was rediscovered in a Melbourne store room. Rugby league's Ashes Cup went missing at Leeds for twelve years in the same era, which suggests the two codes were equally casual with their silverware before either had any money.
1931 or 1932: the argument nobody has settled
The Australian union has long held that the first Bledisloe Cup match was the one-off Test at Eden Park in 1931, which New Zealand won 20-13. The New Zealand union has long held that the competition began with the 1932 tour of Australia.
The evidence favours New Zealand, narrowly. The only contemporaneous record is a minute from a New Zealand management meeting held several days after the 1931 match, recording that Lord Bledisloe wished to present a cup for competition between the two sides. That reads more like an intention formed at the time than a trophy already in play.
The practical consequence is that published counts of Bledisloe series, and of consecutive New Zealand holdings, differ by one depending on which union's version a source has followed. It is why you will see New Zealand's 2025 retention described as both the twenty-second and the twenty-third in succession. The number of calendar years since Australia last held it, twenty-three, is the unambiguous figure.
For the record, the 1932 series opened at the Sydney Cricket Ground on 2 July with a 22-17 Australian win. New Zealand won the next two and took the series 2-1.
How the cup is actually won
- The holder starts with itWhoever won the cup last keeps physical possession and only has to avoid losing the series to keep it.
- The challenger must win the seriesTwo wins, or one win and a draw, takes the trophy. Nothing less does.
- A one-all split changes nothingA drawn series leaves the cup with the holder. This is the rule that decided 1999, 2000, 2002 and 2004.
- Extra matches do not reopen itWhen third or fourth matches have been added, as in 2008, 2010 and 2020, they have not changed a cup already decided.
- Once won, it is defended annuallyThere is no fixed cycle beyond that. The series is played every year the calendar allows one.
The current two-match format, in use since 2022. Earlier formats used one, three or four matches, but the retention principle has been the same throughout.
That retention rule is the single most misunderstood part of the competition. Australia did not win the Bledisloe Cup outright in 1999, 2000 or 2002. They drew each of those series one-all and kept the trophy because they already had it. New Zealand supporters found this deeply irritating at the time, and the criticism was fair: two evenly matched sides splitting two matches happened often enough that the trophy could sit still for years while nothing was actually decided on the field.
The same rule now works the other way. New Zealand have not needed a clean sweep to retain it in any year since 2003, and Australia have needed to win a series outright at some point in twenty-three attempts and have not.
The format, decade by decade
Between 1931 and 1981 the cup was contested irregularly, whenever one country toured the other. New Zealand won it nineteen times in that period and Australia four. There were long gaps, including the war years, and the number of matches in a series varied from one to three.
From 1982 it became annual. Sometimes it was a three-match series, sometimes a single Test. Eight of the competition's series arrangements have been one-off matches, in 1967, 1979, 1983, 1985, 1987, 1989, 1993 and 1994.
From 1996 the cup was folded into the new Tri Nations. Until 1998 that meant the two tournament matches plus a third standalone Test. From 1999 to 2005 the third match was dropped and the cup was decided over the two Tri Nations fixtures alone, which is the period the retention rule became contentious. Three-match contests returned briefly in 2006 and 2012.
Since 2022 it has been a two-match, home-and-away series counting towards the Rugby Championship. The exception is 2026, when the Rugby Championship is not being played and the Bledisloe reverts to a standalone series.
Australia's twelve titles
| Year | How it was won |
|---|---|
| 1934 | Series won at home, 25-11 in Sydney and a draw |
| 1949 | Won 2-0 in New Zealand, the first Australian success there |
| 1979 | One-off match at the Sydney Cricket Ground |
| 1980 | Home series won in a three-match contest |
| 1986 | Series won in New Zealand, including the last Australian win at Eden Park |
| 1992 | Home series won |
| 1994 | One-off match at the Sydney Football Stadium, won 20-16 |
| 1998 | Series won 3-0, the only Australian sweep of the modern era |
| 1999 | Retained on a drawn series |
| 2000 | Retained on a drawn series |
| 2001 | Series won 2-0 |
| 2002 | Retained on a drawn series |
Four of the twelve were won before 1980. Three of the twelve were retentions rather than outright series wins. The single cleanest result in the list is 1998, when Australia won all three matches: 24-16 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, 27-23 in Christchurch and 19-14 at the old Sydney Football Stadium.
1998 to 2002: the last Australian era
The five-year holding was the product of the same team that won the 1999 World Cup. Rod Macqueen coached, John Eales captained, and the pattern of the period was Australia winning tight matches that they would have lost a decade earlier.
1999 split, New Zealand winning 34-15 at Eden Park and Australia winning 28-7 at Stadium Australia. 2000 split too, in the two most famous matches of the whole rivalry. On 15 July at Stadium Australia, in front of 109,874 people, New Zealand won 39-35 in a match that both countries still show highlights of. Three weeks later in Wellington, Australia trailed by a point in the last minute when Eales, a lock, took over the goal-kicking after the specialists had gone off and landed the penalty that won it 24-23.
2001 was the outright one, 2-0. Australia won 23-15 at Carisbrook in Dunedin on 11 August and then 29-26 at Stadium Australia on 1 September, in what was John Eales's final Test.
2002 was the last. New Zealand won 12-6 in Christchurch, Australia won 16-14 at Stadium Australia on 3 August, and the drawn series left the trophy in Australia. Nobody watching thought they were seeing the end of anything.
Twenty-three years
New Zealand regained it in 2003, winning 50-21 at Stadium Australia and 21-17 at Eden Park, and have not given it back.
- New Zealand wins72.5%
- Australia wins23.1%
- Drawn4.4%
About 160 matches. The venue-split totals published to 5 August 2023 gave 156 matches with 37 Australian wins, 112 New Zealand wins and seven draws; the four matches played in 2024 and 2025 were all won by New Zealand and are added here.
Show the numbers
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| New Zealand wins | 116 |
| Australia wins | 37 |
| Drawn | 7 |
| Venue | Played | Australia | New Zealand | Drawn |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| In Australia | 74 | 22 | 47 | 5 |
| In New Zealand | 78 | 14 | 62 | 2 |
| Neutral | 4 | 1 | 3 | 0 |
| Total | 156 | 37 | 112 | 7 |
Those venue splits are as published to 5 August 2023, which is why the total is 156 rather than about 160. The four matches since, two in 2024 and two in 2025, were all won by New Zealand.
The home-and-away difference is real but smaller than the reputation suggests. Australia have won 22 of 74 at home and 14 of 78 away. Home advantage is worth something in this fixture; it has never been worth enough.
2003 to 2019: how the run was built
The first decade of the streak was the least competitive. New Zealand won the cup 2-0 in 2003, 2005 and 2006, and retained it on drawn series in 2004 and 2007. Australia's only bright spots in the period were isolated wins rather than series threats, and the fixture had settled into a shape where the trophy was effectively decided before the second match.
The 2008 and 2009 series were four-match affairs including the Hong Kong and Tokyo fixtures, both won by New Zealand. From 2010 to 2019 the trophy did not change hands once and Australia won the series in none of those years. The closest they came was 2014, when the Sydney match was drawn 12-12 and the second was lost, and 2015, when a home win in Sydney was followed by a heavy defeat at Eden Park.
The pattern that hardened over that decade is the one that still applies. Australia can win one match, usually at home, usually against a New Zealand side either at the start of a cycle or resting players. They cannot win two. And under the retention rule, one is worth nothing.
What separates the second half of the streak from the first is that New Zealand's own standard has slipped. The All Blacks lost a home series to Ireland in 2022 and have not been the untouchable side of 2011 to 2016 for some years. Australia have not converted any of that into a Bledisloe series, which is the strongest evidence that the problem is Australian rather than a function of New Zealand's dominance.
Eden Park
Australia's last win at Eden Park was in 1986. New Zealand have not lost a Test there to anybody since 1994. Those two runs are the most quoted numbers in the rivalry and they are usually quoted together, which slightly overstates the point: the second is about New Zealand's general strength at the ground, the first is specific to Australia.
The 2025 match was a fair example of the pattern. Australia trailed 20-3 early, came back to within two points in the second half, then conceded again after a yellow card and lost 33-24. New Zealand retained the cup for the twenty-third year running.
Whether the streak is a psychological artefact or just an accumulation of individual results is the perennial argument. The evidence supports the boring answer: New Zealand have been the better team for most of the period, they play at Eden Park about once a year, and one team being better than another for thirty-nine years produces exactly this pattern without needing anything extra to explain it.
The matches people still talk about
Greg Cornelsen scored four tries in a Bledisloe match in Auckland in 1978, a feat matched only by Beauden Barrett on the New Zealand side. It remains the individual scoring record in the fixture.
In 1994 at the Sydney Football Stadium, on the site now occupied by Allianz Stadium, George Gregan tackled Jeff Wilson into touch a metre short of the line to preserve a 20-16 Australian win. It is the most replayed defensive play in Australian rugby and it won a Bledisloe Cup on its own, since the series was a single match.
The 2000 Sydney match, 39-35 to New Zealand, is the crowd record and the most commonly nominated best match. Eales's penalty in Wellington three weeks later is the most commonly nominated best finish.
At the other end, the 43-5 loss at Stadium Australia on 31 October 2020 is Australia's record defeat in the fixture and New Zealand's largest winning margin in it. The 57-22 defeat at Eden Park in 2021 is the most points Australia have conceded in a Bledisloe match.
Richie McCaw played more Bledisloe Cup matches than anyone, 34, and scored eleven tries in them. New Zealand have scored substantially more tries than Australia across the fixture's history, 414 to 241 as of the most recent published count.
Neutral venues
Four Bledisloe matches have been played outside Australia and New Zealand, all of them as extra fixtures after the cup had been decided.
Hong Kong Stadium hosted the fourth match of the 2008 series, which New Zealand won 19-14 in front of 39,000, and reportedly generated over five million pounds for the two unions. Hong Kong got a second in 2010, which Australia won 26-24, but ticket sales fell well short and the experiment was not repeated there.
Tokyo hosted one in 2009, won 32-19 by New Zealand. Yokohama hosted one in 2018 as part of the build-up to the 2019 World Cup, won 37-20, with about 46,000 present, a record for a rugby Test in Japan at the time.
Proposals for matches in Denver and elsewhere in North America have surfaced periodically and none has happened. The financial logic that produced the Asian matches has since been overtaken by the broader restructuring of the international calendar.
The neutral matches are also a reminder of how far the fixture's status extends. Two national teams from countries with a combined population of about thirty-two million were able to fill a stadium in Hong Kong and another in Japan for a match with nothing at stake, at a point when neither country had any meaningful rugby infrastructure. That is not something many bilateral fixtures in any sport can do, and it is the main argument for the Bledisloe being treated as a global property rather than a regional one.
The last six years
The 2020 series was the closest Australia have come since 2002, and it is worth setting out properly because it is the source of every "they were nearly there" argument since. Four matches: a 16-16 draw in Wellington, a 27-7 defeat at Eden Park, the 43-5 defeat in Sydney, and then a 24-22 Australian win at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane on 7 November. That Brisbane match is still Australia's most recent win over New Zealand in any competition.
2021 was three matches and three defeats, including the 57-22. 2022 was two defeats, the first of them 39-37 at Docklands. 2023 was two defeats. 2024 was 31-28 in Sydney and 33-13 in Wellington. 2025 was 33-24 at Eden Park and 28-14 in Perth in front of a 60,113 sellout.
The pattern in that list is that the margins in Australia have narrowed and the margins in New Zealand have not. Three of the last five matches played in Australia have been within seven points. None of the last five played in New Zealand has been.
Where it is played in Australia
Rugby Australia moves the home fixture around, because the Bledisloe is the single largest gate the organisation has in most years and the venue decision is a commercial one. Stadium Australia at Olympic Park has hosted the most in the modern era, including the record crowd, and is covered on the Accor Stadium page.
The rebuilt Sydney Football Stadium at Moore Park, described on the Allianz Stadium page, is Australian rugby union's dedicated Sydney home but is too small for a Bledisloe at full demand. Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane hosted the 2020 match, and its 52,500 rectangular configuration is the best atmosphere the fixture gets in Australia. Docklands Stadium, the Melbourne Cricket Ground and Perth Stadium have all had recent matches.
What the fixture is worth
The Bledisloe is not just the biggest match on the Australian rugby union calendar; in most years it is the biggest source of gate revenue Rugby Australia has. That gives the fixture a commercial weight out of proportion to its two-match length and explains several decisions that look odd from the outside.
It is why the home match moves between cities. It is why third and fourth Bledisloe Tests kept being added in the 2000s and 2010s even when the trophy had already been decided, and why the prospect of losing that extra match to calendar reform was treated as a serious financial problem by both unions. When World Rugby's league-of-nations concepts were being negotiated, the position of both Rugby Australia and New Zealand Rugby was that one home Bledisloe match a year was non-negotiable.
The asymmetry matters too. New Zealand Rugby has other fixtures that draw comparably, most obviously South Africa. Australian rugby union does not: the British and Irish Lions come once every twelve years, and the Rugby Championship matches against South Africa and Argentina do not sell like a Bledisloe. In a code that competes for winter attention with Australian rules and rugby league, the two matches against New Zealand are the fixture that still commands a national audience regardless of form.
Which is the uncomfortable part. A competition Australia have not won since 2002 is also the one they most need to keep selling.
The women's trans-Tasman fixture
Australia and New Zealand's women contest their own trophy, the Laurie O'Reilly Cup, named after the Black Ferns coach who died in 1998. It is played over a short annual series and New Zealand have dominated it, in a pattern that will look familiar to anyone reading the men's record above.
The Wallaroos have been closing the gap faster than the Wallabies have, largely because the domestic competition behind them has grown quickly and because women's rugby in both countries is at an earlier point in its professional development, where investment translates into results more directly. The women's programme, its World Cup record and the Super W competition that feeds it are covered on the Wallaroos page.
2026: a standalone series
The 2026 Bledisloe is unusual in two ways. It is a two-match series played on 10 October at Eden Park and 17 October at Stadium Australia in Sydney, and it is not part of the Rugby Championship, because SANZAAR dropped that tournament for 2026 and 2030 to accommodate reciprocal New Zealand and South Africa tours.
That gives the fixture something it has not had since the 1990s: standing on its own, with nothing else riding on the result and no tournament table to complicate it. Australia go into it having won four of their five Tests in 2026 under Les Kiss, including a first-ever Test series win in Argentina, and New Zealand go into it as holders since 2003.
The requirement is unchanged and unforgiving. Australia must win both matches, or win one and draw the other. A one-all split, which is the most statistically likely outcome given recent margins in Australia and recent margins in New Zealand, leaves the cup exactly where it has been since Australia last held it.
What winning it back would actually take
Three things, on the evidence of the last two decades. The first is winning at Eden Park, or winning the away leg somewhere else, because a series cannot be taken with a home win alone under the retention rule. Australia have not won a Bledisloe match in New Zealand since 2001.
The second is squad continuity through a full cycle. The five-year holding from 1998 to 2002 was one team under one coach. The twenty-three years since have contained nine head coaches, and the Wallabies side that plays the second Bledisloe of a year has frequently been substantially different from the one that played the first.
The third is depth in the forward pack, which is where the recent margins are generated. The pattern of the 2024 and 2025 matches is Australia competitive for fifty or sixty minutes and then losing the last quarter, which is a bench and conditioning problem before it is a tactical one.
None of that is beyond reach. Australia beat South Africa at Ellis Park in 2025 from 22-0 down, which is a harder thing on paper than winning a Test in Auckland. But the cup requires doing it twice in three weeks, which is a different order of difficulty and is why the streak is what it is.
Reading the numbers with the right caveats
Three cautions. Series and title counts differ between sources by one or two because of the 1931 dispute, so treat any precise claim about the number of Bledisloe competitions with suspicion, and prefer statements about calendar years.
The Bledisloe-only match record and the overall Australia versus New Zealand Test record are different figures and are frequently mixed up. About 160 matches have been Bledisloe fixtures. The full head-to-head is 181 Tests to September 2026, of which Australia have won 45, because the two countries played from 1903 onwards and have also met four times at World Cups.
And the venue-split totals published above are stated to August 2023, which is the last full breakdown available. The four matches since are added separately rather than quietly folded in, because doing the arithmetic in the open is more useful than presenting an updated table that no source actually publishes.
Where to go next
The Wallabies' full history and all-time records are on the Wallabies page, and their ten World Cup campaigns, including the two titles, are on the Rugby World Cup page. Australia's women play New Zealand for their own trophy, and the women's programme is covered on the Wallaroos page.
For the grounds, see Allianz Stadium in Sydney and Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane. For the trans-Tasman rivalry in the other winter code, see the Kangaroos page, and for the split that created two codes in the first place, the 1908 page.
For the wider Australian sporting picture, start at the Australia hub or the rugby section.