Why is it so bloody hard to win at Eden Park?

After 40 years, the routine is familiar. A new Wallabies side arrives in Auckland and, with the renewed optimism of a blank scoreboard, bounces into Eden Park for a match-eve training session.

The captain will be asked about why Australia struggle to win at Eden Park. It’s just a footy field, the Wallabies skipper will reason. Even now-All Blacks coach Dave Rennie rolled the line out in 2020, when he was rocking in a gold tracksuit.

“But as soon as you start saying to yourself, ‘it’s another footy field’, it’s got you,” says retired All Blacks great John Kirwan. “Because it’s not.”

Eden Park should be just another footy field. While the Auckland venue has an exemption to be used as a phonebox-sized international cricket ground, it sits perfectly inside World Rugby regulations at 100 metres long and 70 metres wide.

It is a bog-standard grass rectangle.

But the All Blacks have – somehow – turned Eden Park into something far more imposing. That same grass rectangle is a pyschological fortress, inside which the New Zealand rugby team refuse to lose.

The All Blacks haven’t been beaten at Eden Park since 1994 – a run stretching to 53 Tests. And against Australia? The winning streak lasts longer, back to 1986, when the Wallabies last downed the Kiwis 22-9.

Some of those Wallabies are in their 70s, including captain Andrew Slack, who marks the passing of another year in life when journalists start ringing about the hoodoo. With incredible grace, Slack always calls back.

Since that win in 1986, 156 Wallabies players have tried and failed to get the job done against the All Blacks at the Auckland venue. Eales, Gregan, Horan, Larkham, Pocock, Slipper? Zero wins between them.

The All Blacks’ unbeaten run at Eden Park – which dates to France’s 23-20 win in 1994 – sits among the most incredible unbeaten streaks at home in the history of world sport (there were two draws in the 53-match run, against South Africa in 1994 and the Lions in 2017). The All Blacks have lost at other home venues, of course, but never at Eden Park; including winning the Rugby World Cup final in 2011.

The world record belongs to Serbian football team Red Star Belgrade, who were unbeaten at home in league games for an incredible 159 matches, between 2017 and 2025. They broke the previous record of 122 held by Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabéu between 1957 and 1965. Chelsea hold the English Premier League record of 84 games between 2004 to 2008.

In Australian sport, the NRL record is held by Penrith (21 wins between 2019 and 2022), and the AFL record is 29 games by Geelong, between 2008 and 2011. As far as duration, the Kangaroos were unbeaten in league Tests at Suncorp/Lang Park for 24 years between 1990 and 2014, but it covered 12 Tests.

So why can’t anyone beat the All Blacks at Eden Park?

The ground has been redeveloped several times in the past 40 years, meaning any secret home knowledge of wind, camber or other Eden Park agrostology would be mostly redundant.

“For me, it’s just that it is home, and you don’t lose at home,” Kirwan says. “You could say that right across sport, you go to Brookvale, that’s Manly’s home and it’s always harder to win there. You play Queenslanders home, it’s hard. For me as an Aucklander and then an All Black, it was home.

“I used to sit in my same seat, so I felt comfortable, I knew the park, I knew the wind, I knew the crowd, I knew everything about it.

“With the All Blacks, because they travel all the time now, playing there is coming home. It’s become a really strong record, and with each year that passes, that’s where it gets interesting. The record passed to the next players, and they’re probably more anxious about losing at Eden Park than they are winning the Bledisloe.

“It’s become its own legacy.”

One of the greatest All Black wingers in history, Kirwan won countless games at Eden Park, including the inaugural Rugby World Cup final in 1987. But sitting just underneath that high point in Kirwan’s memory bank is having been in the last All Black team to lose there, to Les Bleus in 1994. He was also in the last All Blacks team to lose to the Wallabies in 1986.

“And that was my last year as an All Black,” Kirwan says, referencing his code switch to the Warriors in 1995. “At the time, you don’t think about those things, but yeah, now you do.”

It’s a “spiritual home” but the magic of Eden Park has no discernible origin. The venue is on the border of the well-heeled suburbs of Mount Eden and Kingsland, three kilometres to the southwest of Auckland’s CBD.

Known as Ngā Ana Wai, the area was a wetland and a foodbowl area for local Maori people for hundreds of years. In 1903, a cricketer called Harry Ryan decided to build a rock-strewed cricket field on the site.

“It was called “Ryan’s Folly” because people couldn’t believe you’d build a cricket ground in a swamp,” Eden Park historian Graham Walton says. “But he persevered and it self-drained in the summer a bit. It was finally drained around 1925 when the council put a big drain through the centre.”

Rugby had started playing at Eden Park in 1914, and though it would stay prone to being a flooded mudpit, the All Blacks’ run of success at the field began in 1921. Eden Park hosted the Empire (Commonwealth) Games in 1950 as well.

Few know Eden Park better than Walton, who saw his first game there as a five-year-old in 1946. He has worked at the venue in various guises for 30 years, helped write a book on the site and, at the age of 85, still gives tours.

“My father first moved to the area in 1914, and between the two of us, we’ve seen all but four or five All Blacks Tests played at Eden Park,” he said.

Walton recalls all the Wallabies’ wins at the ground – all four of them – in 1949, 1955, 1978 and 1986.

“1949 was an appalling, waterlogged day and Australia won 16–9. That game featured Australian players like Nick Shehadie — who later became lord mayor of Sydney — Col Windon, Dave Brockhoff and even Rex Mossop,” he said.

A cricket lover, Walton’s favourite memory of the ground is Grant Elliott hitting a six off the second-last ball to win the 2015 World Cup semi-final, ahead of the 2011 World Cup final win over France, 8-7. He recalls hundreds of spectators not even able to physically watch in the last minutes of that game.

Walton has seen 80 years worth of games, but he can’t quite put his finger on why the All Blacks are so strong at Eden Park.

“Talking to All Blacks over the years, they feel a real connection with the crowd in the modern era,” he said. “It’s a bit like Suncorp Stadium, because spectators are close to the playing surface. It’s a bit airy-fairy to talk about atmosphere, but there is a significant atmosphere.“

The records indicate the Wallabies haven’t even had many close defeats, beyond a 6-3 loss in 1991. Mostly, however, they have actually been competitive but for a 10-minute lapse that concedes a try or two, which turns into 30 points as the Wallabies chase and get loose.

After a few years under Joe Schmidt, however, this Wallabies team is better at staying in the game. And new coach Les Kiss has even had a win at Eden Park; as a defence coach for Ireland at the 2011 World Cup – against the Wallabies.

(The Wallabies later beat Wales in the bronze medal game at Eden Park, too).

Kirwan says the pressure of playing at Eden Park is essentially all psychological – for both the visitors, and hosts.

“It’s largely between the ears (for visitors),” he said. “But the positive for us is the big pressure on us as well. This is not just another Bledisloe Cup.

“There’s the added pressure for you to prepare properly. As an All Black, you don’t want to be the first one to lose there.”

Kirwan recalls scoring one of the most famous tries seen in New Zealand, when he ran 80 metres and through half the Italian side, to score in the very first World Cup match in 1987.

“It’s been etched in history a bit, and I held my breath for 90 yards. I scored the try and I was actually dizzy,” Kirwan says.

“But I always remember when I was running back, I was thinking: ‘wow, I really love this place’.”