LIST | The top 5 rivalries in world rugby ranked

We have put our necks on the line and attempted to rank them, from five down to one.

Glasnost is put on the back-burner and though not a high profile as some Test matches, there’s very little love lost in the 18 games these two have played since their inaugural clash in 1993. It gets violent at times.

Before the end of the Soviet Union many of the early clashes involved team-mates but it didn’t prevent frequent bouts of fisticuffs and to date Russia have just one win and 21 defeats to their name against the Georgians.

Games attract crowds in excess of 50,000 and with Russia ploughing more money into developing rugby, don’t expect the rivalry to end any time soon. Keep an eye on this one!

International rugby’s original rivalry. The teams first met (complete with 20 players a side) back in 1871 and have been at it hammer and tongs ever since for the Calcutta Cup.

Sadly, for Scottish fans at least, the one-sided nature of fixture in recent years has taken the sheen off the contest a little in terms of competitiveness. Anyone wishing to see what this fixture means to Scotland should view the infamous 1990 clash when David Sole and co broke English grand slam dreams. The fixture does sometimes bring moments of mutual love and cooperation though.

In 1989 Scotland’s John Jeffery and England’s Dean Richards shared a drunken kick around with the Calcutta Cup on the streets of Edinburgh. Repairing it wasn’t cheap.

A classic case of sibling rivalry which has turned into something a little more serious as the years have rolled past. For New Zealand, the opportunity to give big brother - at least in political, economic and geographical terms - a bloody nose a few times a year is one that is simply too good to be passed up.

As Steve Hansen, now the All Blacks head coach, put it in 2011: “We've gone to war and fought shoulder to shoulder. But they're probably looked on as the big brother and we the little brother. And we want to belt them and they want to belt us.” Mostly the rivalry is knockabout stuff - in classic Aussie fashion, one of the country's newspapers offered its readers a free voodoo doll of Sonny Bill Williams during the 2011 World Cup.

The Scots, French and Irish may want to be England each year as much as Wales, but two factors make this the big one in the northern part of the globe. First, Wales’ national identity is intrinsically linked to rugby - a game that unites a nation and cuts across class barriers in a way in never has in England means there is a particular edge to this match (often to Wales’ detriment).

Secondly, Wales’ superior record against England compared to the other northern hemispheres means this is no one-way rivalry. Welsh captain Phil Bennett once gave a team talk that went: “We've been exploited, raped, controlled and punished by the English – and that's who you are playing this afternoon.”

When South Africa plays New Zealand, consider your country at war," said legendary Springbok Boy Louw back in 1949. It’s a sentiment that has rung true since the teams first met in 1921, with the intervening years pock-marked by rows over biased local refereeing, on-field violence and dirty tricks. As Springbok centre John Gainsford once reportedly said: "When you come to us, we cheat you and beat you. And when we go to you, you cheat us and beat us."

Tensions came to boiling point in 1981, when the Springboks team that toured New Zealand was met by fierce anti-apartheid protests everywhere they went - previously, South Africa's government had denied the Kiwis the right to play Maori players on their soil - and almost forced its abandonment. Politics plays less of a role now, but for two countries in which rugby union is a way of life, and who are often jousting for the game's biggest prizes - they have racked up six World Cups between them - relations will always be icy.