RWC 2015: 14 All Blacks including Richie McCaw and Dan Carter join exclusive two-time World Cup winners' club
14 of the successful 2015 New Zealand squad also played in 2011 and join five Australians and one South African in lifting the Webb Ellis Cup twice
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Your support makes all the difference.The exclusive club of two-time Rugby World Cup winners just got a whole lot bigger after New Zealand beat Australia 34-17 at Twickenham to win a second consecutive final and earn the likes of Richie McCaw and Dan Carter their second winners’ medal.
Up until 2015, just six men had won the Rugby World Cup twice, with five of those coming from the dominant Australian sides of 1991 and 1999. The last man to lift the Webb Ellis Cup on English soil, John Eales, is one of the those men, and the 1999 skipper was on hand once again to bring the famous trophy out onto the pitch ahead of Saturday’s final.
He’s joined in the two-time winners club by his team-mate Dan Crowley, Jason Little, Phil Kearns and Tim Horan, while the only non-Wallaby to feature is the South Africa prop Os du Randt.
However, the All Blacks re-wrote the record books to win back-to-back World Cups for the first time, and in doing so beat South Africa and Australia to becoming the first nation to win the tournament three times.
So who has joined the two-time winners club after success in both 2011 and 2015?
Click on the gallery below to find out.
The victory was all the more sweeter for New Zealand given that a number of their squad were playing in their final match for the All Blacks. Carter, Ma’a Nonu and Conrad Smith will all move to France, thus ending their international careers, while the prop Tony Woodcock and hooker Keven Mealamu will retire completely from the game.
It remains unknown what the future holds for McCaw though. The flanker is expected to retire, although he stressed that he has not made his mind up and with a British and Irish Lions tour on the horizon, you never know.
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