Sam Whitelock of the All Blacks, left, fights with Bakkies Botha of the Springboks during a Tri Nations test match in 2011.

For 60 years until the Rugby World Cup, each series between the All Blacks and Springboks was for the mythical world championship.

Ultimately, their contests dragged in the world, which halted contact between them for 11 years until the end of apartheid.

No other national teams come close to their win-loss records, which have bred the fiercest rivalry in the sport, and the most controversial.

FAIRFAX NZ The second rugby match between the All Blacks and the Springboks at Athletic Park, Wellington in August 1956.

Even before the ongoing Rugby World Cup, where the teams meet in the semifinals on Saturday, a political party in South Africa tried, and failed, to block the Springboks from leaving home until they met the quota for non-white players.

That kind of self-inflicted, off-field drama has dogged them since the first series in 1921, when South Africa toured New Zealand.

In the deciding third test, they drew 0-0 in a rainstorm in Wellington. But the tour was tarnished when the Springboks beat New Zealand Natives 9-8. First, the Springboks turned their backs on the haka, then a South African correspondent wrote how they were "disgusted" by thousands of whites cheering "colored men to defeat members of their own race."

FAIRFAX NZ Fans created a tent city outside Wellington's Athletic Park while queuing for the All Blacks-Springboks test match on August 4, 1956.

New Zealand became complicit in South Africa's policy of segregation on its first tour to South Africa in 1928, when it agreed not to send any Maori players, including George Nepia and Jimmy Mill. Nine of their team-mates from the 1924-25 Invincibles toured, and Nepia added to protests when he wrote that all of New Zealand was indignant "at this deference to apartheid."

South Africa won the first test 17-0, which stood as New Zealand's worst defeat until 1999, but the series was drawn 2-2.

Remembering 1921, the Springboks refused to meet a Maori team in 1937, and Maori organised a nationwide social and sporting boycott. It mattered little on the field. The visitors were near perfect in winning the deciding third test in Auckland 17-6, five tries to nil.

FAIRFAX NZ Springbok tour protesters storm Hamilton's Rugby Park on July 25, 1981, forcing the match between the tourists and Waikato to be abandoned.

The All Blacks' tour of 1940 was cancelled because of World War II. Post-war, when rumors spread that New Zealand was considering picking Maori for the next tour, the Die Transvaler newspaper editorialised in 1946 that "a team like that will not be accepted in South Africa. South Africans will not sacrifice their principles just to play rugby." In 1948, the South African government legalised apartheid, which had been rooted in sport since the end of the 19th century.

New Zealand acquiesced in 1949, leaving behind Maori stars Johnny Smith and Ben Couch, a future Minister of Maori Affairs, and Minister of Police during the ill-fated 1981 tour. New Zealand lost the series 4-0, scored more tries in three tests, but was outkicked by prop Okey Geffin.

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FAIRFAX NZ Lancaster Park was the scene for protests during the 1981 Springbok tour.

New Zealanders' desperation to win a first series against the Springboks in 1956 muted protests. The All Blacks won the first test, and lost the second, which was so brutal that they summoned from retirement prop and former boxing champion Kevin Skinner. He checked South Africa's aggressive frontrow, and New Zealand won the third and fourth tests to hand South Africa its first ever series defeat.

One in 15 New Zealanders signed an anti-tour petition in 1959, and thousands marched in protest, but the government wouldn't intervene, and New Zealand sent another all-white team in 1960. The series was decided in the fourth and last test in Port Elizabeth, won 8-3 by South Africa.

Amid one of the great All Black eras, the 1965 team beat the visitors 3-1, including a record 20-3 score in the fourth test in Auckland.

GETTY IMAGES Key men Richie McCaw of the All Blacks, left, and Bryan Habana of the Springboks chat after a Rugby Championship test.

Under better organised pressure from anti-racist organisations, the New Zealand government was finally prepared to pressure rugby bosses, and cancelled the planned 1967 all-white tour. Denied their favorite visiting team, the South Africans allowed Maori to tour in 1970, but as "honorary whites". South Africa won that series 2-1, clinching it 20-17 in the third test.

The Labour Party won the 1972 New Zealand election promising not to interfere with the 1973 tour by South Africa, but postponed it after police warned of "the greatest eruption of violence this country has ever known." The government also didn't want to risk a boycott by African countries of the 1974 Commonwealth Games in New Zealand.

The flip-flop contributed to Labour losing the 1975 election, whereupon the returning National Party said it was happy to keep politics out of sports. Nobody else was. The All Blacks returned in 1976, soon after the deadly Soweto riots, and drew international condemnation. During the tour, nearly 30 African countries boycotted the Montreal Olympics. South Africa won the series 3-1, but controversy raged again over hometown refereeing.

DAVID ROGERS/GETTY IMAGES Heyneke Meyer, the South Africa head coach, had to deal with political issues as well as sporting ones before the Cup.

In 1981, South Africa made its first visit in 16 years, and featured its first ever black player, Errol Tobias. All Blacks captain Graham Mourie and star center Bruce Robertson made themselves unavailable on moral grounds. The depth of public opposition to the tour, and public support, split New Zealand, which descended into its worst rioting in 30 years. Streets outside barbed-wire-ringed stadiums became battlegrounds, but the tour went on.

The All Blacks won the first test, the Springboks the second, and the third was played out in Auckland while a man in a single-engine plane dropped flour bombs on Eden Park. The Springboks rallied to level the match at 22-22, but the All Blacks received a disputed penalty in injury time, and Allan Hewson, whose part-Maori wife boycotted every game, kicked the series-winning penalty.

New Zealand's High Court blocked the All Blacks from touring in 1985, but they were the first team South Africa wanted to meet post-apartheid in 1992. The All Blacks won 27-24.

South Africa was barred from the 1987 and 1991 Rugby World Cups but given the 1995 tournament, and the old rivals reached the final. The All Blacks, drained by food poisoning, lost in extra time 15-12, but Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first black president, used the occasion for national reconciliation by wearing the Springboks jersey that blacks associated with white rule.

The following year, the All Blacks finally achieved their first series victory in South Africa, 2-1. It was the start of the professional era, and the teams have met at least twice annually, more often than not playing the best matches of the year.

For the record, the All Blacks have 52 wins, the Springboks 35, alongside three draws.

- AP