Stand aside Australia, New Zealand are now England’s No 1 sporting rival

Do we talk about England and Australia’s sporting rivalry too much? In the past couple of weeks, we haven’t had much choice. The rugby league Kangaroos have been hopping about between London, Liverpool and Leeds, while the Wallabies grazed on the Twickenham turf. In F1, Bristol-born Lando Norris has been getting booed on track during his relentless comeback against his Melburnian McLaren teammate, Oscar Piastri. And that personal battle has reached its climax just in time for the much-hyped men’s Ashes – with England kicking off their tour in Perth to already hysterical headlines.

This weekend brings a pause in hostilities. One Ashes series has ended, another is yet to begin. A gap in the calendar before back-to-back grands prix leaves Lando quietly teetering at the top of the drivers’ table. And into that small air pocket – if the Pom-bashing and Aussie-baiting has left a breath of oxygen – come the Kiwis. On Saturday afternoon, just after three o’clock, New Zealand’s rugby union team will run out against England in west London. And by the time we know the result, the Silver Ferns will be taking to the netball court on the other side of the city, in the first of a three-match series against the Roses.

Both fixtures are pulse-quickening prospects. The All Blacks will want and expect another win towards a clean sweep of their autumn internationals – so will Steve Borthwick’s unbeaten England. The netball will be no less tooth-and-nail. The Roses have won three of their last five meetings, the Silver Ferns two. A couple of those matches have been single-goal thrillers, with underdog victories for England against the world No 2s in last year’s Netball Nation Cup and the Taini Jamison Trophy.

In fact, the past few years have been pretty epic for England’s sporting rivalry with New Zealand. Two of the most hair-raising, finger-chewing finals in any World Cup have been fought between these teams, first in the 2019 men’s cricket edition, and then in the women’s rugby three years later. Meanwhile the past decade has robbed the England-All Blacks fixtures of the air of inevitability they once exuded. If you exclude the 2019 World Rugby Cup semi-final, the average margin of victory between the two is just over two points – and the semi was a stunning upset in itself.

Which raises the question: why don’t we make more of this national rivalry? Why doesn’t it have its own nickname, its own memes, its own incessant shit-talk? It’s not that New Zealanders don’t bag their English cousins. Taika Waititi tweeted that the England rugby team were “sore losers” straight after their 2019 World Cup final defeat by South Africa. But this was a Kiwi film-maker whose default facial expression is a bemused and kindly smile, so no one really minded. If an Australian had done that, there would have been afters for days.

I do appreciate that it’s harder to care about bragging rights against a country whose chief national characteristic is not bragging. New Zealanders are too classy for their own good: everyone knows they won cricket’s Moral World Cup in 2019, and they’ve steadfastly refused to make a fuss about it. But surely it’s time that England sports fans start recognising the truth – that the Kiwis are now our No 1 sporting rival, not Australia.

Look at the evidence. They’ve just completed a great job of humiliating England at cricket, which was always Australia’s purview before. When England turned up for their white-ball visit last month there was more than a whiff of condescension about the scheduling, which turned New Zealand into a staging post and warm-up act for their ultimate Ashes destination. So it felt only right that Matt Henry should dismiss Jamie Smith with the first ball of the series, a wicket that functioned not only as a meta-joke/Rory Burns callback but as the start of a chain of abject batting collapses.

It’s not just on land they’ve been trouncing England, either. Britain waited 60 years to compete for last year’s America’s Cup, but it was all over in seven days, and Team New Zealand became the first team in modern history to lift sailing’s most famous trophy three times running. In defeat Ben Ainslie called them the greatest team in the sport’s history.

Let’s be honest, English sport is kind of obsessed with New Zealand right now. In the Nineties and Noughties, Australia was the country you went to to poach a coach (or a player, if they had a granny from Grantham), because the Australian Institute of Sport was leading the way in high performance programming. Now it’s all about the Kiwi mindset. The Red Roses won this year’s Women’s World Cup with a Kiwi head coach, John Mitchell. The All Blacks performance guru Owen Eastwood has found a new home here since helping Gareth Southgate transfuse some NZ spirit into the England football team – he now works with Chelsea.

As for cricket, do we even need to say the word? The Ben Stokes-Brendon McCullum bromance birthed an entire new style of cricket, with a backroom staff that has included additional Kiwis in Jeetan Patel and Tim Southee. Bazball hasn’t just spread to England’s domestic scene, it’s been adopted by the England women’s side too, if not always with successful outcomes.

It’s often observed that for so small a nation, New Zealand punches several classes above its weight in the sports world. At last year’s Paris Olympics they finished fourth in the per capita medals table, three places above Australia and 20 above Team GB. It is no longer Australia who are setting the gold standard and making the rest of us feel inferior. So why do we still act as if they’re the ones to beat?

We fixate on their lissome-limbed mateship and moustachioed aggression – but it’s the Kiwis’ harmonious teamwork and resourceful ethos that should be drivingEngland wild with frustrated envy. I’m going to say it: it’s time to make New Zealand their Sporting Enemy No 1. If nothing else, it’ll annoy some Aussies.

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