The eight biggest rivalries in world rugby ranked

And with it came some of the most intense rivalries the sporting world has seen. While football may have the upperhand in club rivalries, on the international scene it’s rugby that holds sway given the frequency they lock horns on the Test stage.

They’re the clashes that set the pulses racing more than any other with the prospect of a full-blooded encounter with the odd bout of fisticuffs thrown in for good measure.

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.

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 draw and 17 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!

An all-Celtic squabble that has its roots in a brawl in a Belfast theatre in 1914, when Wales' notoriously combative forwards - the 'Terrible Eight' - were allegedly set upon by their Irish counterparts.

The game that followed was dubbed the roughest ever played, and so the tone was set for a rivalry which - while not quite brimming with the kind of political and cultural animosity that marks both nations' meetings with England, regularly provides fireworks.

Their meeting in 2005, which saw Gavin Henson and Brian O’Driscoll go at each other like rabid dogs, while there is still resentment in Ireland over the treatment meted out to Brian O'Driscoll on the 2013 Lions Tour, which Warren Gatland pack his side with Welshmen. “Probably, out of all the teams in the Six Nations, the Welsh players dislike the Irish the most,” Gatland noted in 2009. He's probably still right.

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.

Les Bleus and the All Blacks have had some x-rated clashes down the years fit only for airing after the 9pm watershed. And none more so than the infamous 1986 ‘Battle of Nantes’.

It was where Wayne ‘Buck’ Shelford went down in rugby folklore playing in only his second Test for the All Blacks.

Against the brutally intimidating French side, Shelford found himself at the bottom of a rather aggressive ruck on 20 minutes.

An errant Les Bleus stud found its way to his groin, where it somehow managed to tear his scrotum.

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Famously dubbed ‘Le Crunch’, you sense the deep-rooted dislike here goes all the way back to Agincourt, Trafalgar, Waterloo or maybe all three.

Take your pick! Ever since those famous battles France and England have traded blows and none more so than on the rugby field.

The intense dislike for one another reached new heights in the 1990s when England embarked on a run of eight wins on the bounce and the 1991 and 1992 seasons saw a low point in cross-channel relations.

“If 1991 was a closing time bar-room brawl, 1992 was the 1am dust-up in the car park,” was one newspaper's report of the violence that unfolded.

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 rivarly 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 four World Cups between them - relations will always be icy.