July 8: On This Day in World History … briefly
The contest between The Wallabies and The Springboks is one of the major rivalries in rugby union.
1933: First rugby union test match between the Wallabies and Springboks
The two teams’ first meeting was on July 8, 1933, at Newlands in Cape Town in the first of five tests on the 1933 Wallabies tour. The test was won 17–3 by South Africa, who also won that first series 3–2.
South Africa has a better than 57 percent winning record against Australia and before the era of sporting boycotts, dominated the early encounters up to 1971. Out of all their tests, South Africa holds the advantage having won 46 of 83 games. However, since South African rugby’s readmission in 1992, the record has been more even—Australia winning 28 and South Africa 25 out of 52 games, three having been drawn.
Both sides have exhibited a considerable home advantage, with the Springboks winning more than 75 percent of matches played in South Africa and the Wallabies winning more than 60 percent of matches played in Australia.
In the amateur era, the Springboks made five tours to Australia, and were undefeated in three of them. South Africa won two of the four test series they played in Australia; 2-0 in 1937, and 3-0 in 1971. By contrast, the Wallabies made six tours to South Africa, only once making it through undefeated, albeit on a tour comprising only four matches and one test in 1992. Prior to that, Australia’s best away tour was the 2-all drawn test series of 1963.
Prior to 1972, South African teams were racially selected, organised by the whites-only South African Rugby Board. Australia then supported the international boycott of sporting contacts with South Africa over the issue of apartheid. The teams did not meet again until 1992, when apartheid was being dismantled and the SARB had merged with the non-racial South African Rugby Union. Since that time Australia has won just over 50 percent of their games and has won the Mandela Plate nine times in the twelve years since its inception.
In the professional era, extended tours of each country have been replaced by participation in an annual series involving the top teams of the Southern Hemisphere. From 1996 through 2011, Australia and South Africa competed alongside New Zealand in the Tri Nations series. Starting in 2012, the three nations competed alongside Argentina in The Rugby Championship. In the Tri Nations era, the Wallabies and Springboks played two or three encounters each year on a home-and-away basis; the Rugby Championship features two annual encounters, also on a home-and-away basis.
Most notable historic snippets or facts extracted from the book ‘On This Day’ first published in 1992 by Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, London, as well as additional supplementary information extracted from Wikipedia.
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