Tri Nations: The History

Thursday 26th July 2001

Tri-Nations is a lineal descendant of the AGC South Pacific Championship started in 1986 by New South Wales. It was a competition for six teams - New South Wales, Queensland, Fiji, Auckland, Canterbury and Wellington - a competition dominated by Auckland. It collapsed in 1991 when the NSW RU found itself in financial difficulties but came back in 1992 as the Super 6.
 
Then South Africa came back into international rugby and Super 6 became Super 10 in 1993. After the 1995 World Cup and professionalism and all that television money, Super 10 became Super 12. And a new body, SANZAR, was born with representatives of the Australia, New Zealand and South Africa as midwives.

The representatives were Leo Williams, the president of the Australian Rugby Union, Ritchie Guy, the chairman of the New Zealand Rugby Union and Louis Luyt, the president of the South African Rugby Football Union. They met and discussed things. A and established SANZAR, with David Moffit as chief executive officer, succeeded in 1996 by Rian Oberholzer who held the post till 1997. Since then SANZAR has been run by the chief executive officers of the three participating countries.

Besides the Super 12, SANZAR brought the Tri-Nations into being, a double round of tests amongst the three countries each year, food for the hungry maw of television, played even in a World Cup year. The matches were played a week apart, something which first happened in international rugby during the NZ Cavaliers' tour of South Africa in 1986.

As in Super 12 there was to be a bonus point for scoring four or more tries and another for losing by seven or fewer points.

New Zealand have dominated the Tri-Nations from the start, winning three of the first four tournaments (1996, 1997, 1999).

South Africa was the first team to spoil New Zealand's perfect title record on their unbeaten record run of 17 matches back in 1998. Indeed that year New Zealand became the only team in Tri-Nations not to win a match in a season.

In 2001, a late match-winning try from Toutai Kefu in the last game against New Zealand gave Australia their second consecutive Tri-Nations title after they won it in 2000 for the first time.