Not to mention (gasp) rugby league.
And of course in Argentina, France, Italy, England, and Scotland itâs behind football (and cricket in England). Wales, maybe.
Itâs still my favourite sport, though.
India is a powerhouse in kabbadi, but the sport still doesnât outstrip cricket.
I think 75% to 80% is closer. NZ has of course benefitted hugely from having the largest Polynesian population in the world. Plus anyone of any potential growing up in Fiji, Samoa, Tonga etc. will be scouted and brought over to New Zealand where the professional contracts are.
Historic win for the Pumas!
You beat me to it!
This is very true, but seems there are money problems now so I wonder if more will stay at home with the national teams or go to the EU or Aussie.
Iâm a U.S. Citizen. Sometime around 2008 or 2010, I heard that the All Blacks would be in the United States playing an exhibition game against the United States National Rugby team, our nationâs best! They would be competing at a stadium near my house, so even though I donât know much about rugby I drove down and paid the entry fee to watch.
The All Blacks were amazing and destroyed the United States. The final score was something ridiculous like 78 to 0.
Towards the end of the match, while chatting with the other fans, I made a comment about how good the All Blacks are. I said âof course they are the best in the world.â
One of the other fans corrected me, saying âsorry mate, thatâs not the All Blacks. You just watched the amateur, minor-league team defeat the United States. Those are the guys who are training to make it to the professional All Blacks team.â
I think his comment deserves an additional correction: âYou just watched the amateur, minor-league team defeat the tiny, minuscule subset of Americans who have enough interest in rugby to actually participate.â
I mean, you can call it âthe United Statesâ if it makes you feel better, but as if. 
Maybe someday rugby will be popular (again) outside the slivers of Eastern coastline (Boston esp, and in parts of New England), along with tiny isolated oases elswhere (usually university towns where, like soccer, rugby suffers from pretensions of superiority over US sports), but that day ainât here yet.
By the way, I got roped into playing rugby twice (in university) as a young man. I didnât think it was a tenth as much fun to play as football, and I found the elitist bullshit conversations about it about ten times as insufferable as conversations about, say, education in rural America.
We should revisit this if (likely not when) rugby ever achieves lift-off in the America that is not coastal.
Yes, of course. I just donât want to be the guy who has to explain all the possible inferences to be drawn from my story!
(I figure others will pipe up and explain what my story means.)
(And, typing with thumbs on phone, so not going to explain too much!)
Saw a member of the NZ team before the game say âexpect the States to do about as well as New Zealand would playing basketball against the USâ.
Iâd like to see a Pacific Islands team play together, like the Windies.
Samoa and Fiji? Theyâre nearly as useless as the Windies.
Why would you like to see that?
I would say New Zealand does bit better in Basketball than the Yanks in New Zealand. The American NBA has pretty good player (Steven Adams) from New Zealand, can not say that about any Americans in NZ Rugby. (Aussie born players are more numerous in the NBA which is surprising to me). There are more top tier players from Japan getting noticed after the world cup, so the Americans are falling behind but I guess they do not care mostly.
Not so much falling behind as remaining behind, but thereâs league play the last few years, weâll see if things pick up a bit or not.
Maybe theyâd be more competitive! Get Tonga in there as well
Combine NZ and Australia? Make it Great Britain like rugby league?
Seriously, WTF are you on about? People are similar therefore they should be the same team?
WTF are you on is more like it. Say Samoa, Fiji, and Tonga. Theyâre in the same region?
So is England and France.
Theyâre major nations with the ability to be strongly competitive on their own. You have heard of the Windies, right? Just an idea anyway, if you donât like it, great. Doesnât sound worth getting too excited over
I have heard of the Windies. The British Empire created that team.
I knew you must have heard of them! 
Okay inspired by @jmeeâs post above which gave me a great laugh I will attempt my own All Blacks anecdote, probably well known to some readers here. Quite a few years ago in an All Blacks vs Australia match the Australians didnât bother facing up to the Haka. They just stayed around the goal area doing stretches and sprints and stuff. Completely ignored it.
So the All Blacks did their war dance in the middle of the field facing no one. They proceeded to go on and smash the Wallabies something like 43-6, worst defeat ever at that point.