Bledisloe Cup fast facts
Australia and New Zealand will get the inaugural Rugby Championship underway in Sydney on Saturday.
We bring you some fast facts of the more than a century of rivalry between the Wallabies and All Blacks.
* The Bledisloe Cup was donated by the then Governor General of New Zealand, Lord Bledisloe, for competition between the two countries in 1931.
* Australia won the trophy for the first time in 1934, beating New Zealand 25-11 in Sydney.
* Australia has not held the Bledisloe Cup since it was relinquished in 2003 during a nil-2 series loss to the then John Mitchell and Robbie Deans-coached All Blacks.
* The Wallabies last 'won' a Bledisloe Cup series against New Zealand two-nil in 2001. None of the current Australian players have featured in a winning series against the All Blacks.
* Australia has split its last four Tests with New Zealand two-apiece. 2012 sees two of the three Bledisloe Tests played on Australian soil. Since 2008, three four-match series (2008, 2009 & 2010) and a two-match series (2011) have been played. To win the trophy, Australia must 'win' the series, as a drawn result sees the Cup retained by the holder in each instance.
* Last year's 25-20 win over New Zealand in Brisbane was Australia's 47th Test win against the All Blacks. Three more would make Australia the first country, of the 24 New Zealand has played; to have achieved 50 'Test' wins against the All Blacks.
* Just two players - David Campese (eight) and Matthew Burke (seven) have scored more than the six tries that Adam Ashley-Cooper has posted against the All Blacks.
* Stirling Mortlock and Lote Tuqiri (both nine) are the only Australians to have scored more than the eight tries Ashley-Cooper has posted in the annual Southern Hemisphere championship formerly known as the Tri-Nations.
* This is the 168th match of a trans-Tasman rivalry that dates back to 1903 when New Zealand won the inaugural meeting 22-3 in Sydney.
* This tally includes the 24 matches played between 1920 and 1928 when NSW represented Australia. The ARU accords these matches Test status although the NZRU doesn't include them in its records.
* Of the 167 games played between the two nations, New Zealand has won 115 and Australia 47, with five draws - the most recent of which occurred in Brisbane 24 years ago, when the two teams finished at 19-19 in the second match of the 1988 series. There have been 58 matches between the teams since the last drawn game.
* This is the 67th Test to have been played in Sydney dating back to the maiden trans-Tasman Test 109 years ago. Australia has won 22 of these and drawn another two but lost 42. These figures include 16 games where NSW participated representing the country between 1920 and 1928, for four wins and 12 defeats.
* ANZ Stadium has been the sole Bledisloe Cup venue in Sydney for 13 years. This is the 12th trans-Tasman Test to have been played in that time. Australia has won six of the previous matches and New Zealand five.
* New Zealand has won the last two Bledisloe Cup Tests at ANZ Stadium by a solitary point - 19-18 in 2009 and 23-22 a year later.
* Both Australia and New Zealand posted their highest winning scores in the 167-game rivalry at ANZ Stadium: Australia winning 34-19 in 2008, while New Zealand won 50-21 in 2003.
* Australia posted a record 28-7 win over New Zealand when the first trans-Tasman Test was played at the stadium in 1999. A year later, the two teams played the 'Match of the Century' as the All Blacks won a thrilling 39-35 victory in the last moment.
* Last year's 19-point win over South Africa snapped a sequence of four consecutive losses for Australia at the ground - three of which had been conceded by one-point, to New Zealand in 2009 and 2010 and England earlier in 2010. The fourth loss was the surprise defeat by Samoa in last year's Test-season opener.
* The first Test match to be played at the ground, which opened in 1999, saw Australia beat England 22-15.
* Australia has played 30 previous Tests against all-comers at ANZ Stadium, winning 22 and losing eight (a 73% winning ratio). One of the losses was 17-20 after extra time in the 2003 Rugby World Cup final against England.
* For three straight Tests through 2009 and 2010, Matt Giteau was the only Australian player to score points in Tests at ANZ Stadium. Giteau scored 22 against France and 18 against New Zealand in 2009, and then 20 against England in 2010. The sequence was finally broken when James O'Connor scored Australia's opening try, 15 minutes into the Bledisloe Cup Test later in 2010. Just for good measure, Giteau signed off with 18 points in his final Test appearance at ANZ Stadium, during last year's loss to Samoa.
* Saturday's match represents the inaugural game in the new four-way Rugby Championship which, for the first time, includes Argentina. Australia and New Zealand also played the maiden match in the Tri-Nations, with the All Blacks winning 43-6 at Wellington in 1996.