Until the 1990s South Africa were considered one of the most successful rugby nations in Test match history, with a positive win-loss ratio against every Test playing nation including their traditional rivals, New Zealand. Despite having to contend with off field problems that the other major Test nations do not face, the Springboks still maintain their positive win-loss ratio against every team, other than New Zealand. The All Blacks eventually managed to overtake South Africa because of a run of Springbok losses caused by the lack of a reliable goal kicker, allied to much more fundamental weakenesses of their historical tight forward strength being overtaken by the All Blacks, the All Blacks scoring multiple tries against them in every match (home and away) by virtue of more creative and skilled backs and loose forwards, and the inability to win a single match in New Zealand between 1998 and 2008, and only one match from 1981 to 2008. South Africa are currently ranked number two in the world rankings. When the ranking system was introduced in October 2003 South Africa were ranked sixth. Their ranking fluctuated in the following four years, until victory in the 2007 Rugby World Cup sent them to the top of the rankings. Since then, the top two rankings have been interchanged between South Africa and New Zealand, with the Springboks most recently regaining top spot in July 2009 with a win over the All Blacks in the Tri-Nations and losing it in November 2009 with a loss to France on their end-of-year tour.
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