Wales Beat New Zealand 35-28 to End 73-Year Wait for All Blacks Win

For 73 years, every Wales team that faced New Zealand walked off beaten. On Saturday in Cardiff, Steve Tandy’s side finally broke that sequence, beating the All Blacks 35-28 in a nine-try Nations Championship match that ended with players and supporters in tears at the Principality Stadium.

The result ends a run of 34 consecutive defeats to New Zealand stretching back to 1953. Some bookmakers had priced a Wales win at 20-1 before kick-off.

Two tries in six minutes

Wales could hardly have started better. Inside the opening six minutes, scrum-half Tomos Williams pounced on a Louis Rees-Zammit chip to score, and captain Dewi Lake crashed over from a flat Williams pass after a well-drilled forward move. It was the first time Wales had ever led New Zealand by 14 points.

Prop Archie Griffin added a third try, his second in two weeks, to make it 21-7. But New Zealand, captained for the first time by full-back Beauden Barrett in his 149th Test, worked their way back. Scrum-half Cortez Ratima, number eight Wallace Sititi and wing Fehi Fineanganofo all scored, and Richie Mo’unga’s conversions had the sides level at 21-21 at half-time.

Wales strike again after the break

Many Wales fans will have feared the familiar pattern of the All Blacks pulling away in the second half. Instead, Wales repeated their first-half blitz. Williams’s long passing created tries for centre Eddie James and then Rees-Zammit within eight minutes of the restart, and Sam Costelow converted both to complete a perfect five from five with the boot.

Five tries is the most Wales have ever scored in a Test against New Zealand. At 35-21, the home side had a cushion, but flanker Peter Lakai’s try cut the gap to seven points with plenty of time left.

Holding the line

The final quarter was won by Wales’s defence. Three times New Zealand carried the ball over the Wales line, and three times Welsh defenders got underneath to hold it up. Replacement prop Gareth Thomas stopped Sititi, flanker James Botham did the same to hooker Asafo Aumua, and replacement fly-half Dan Edwards combined with Jac Morgan to deny the All Blacks a third time. Morgan, lock Dafydd Jenkins and replacement number eight Taine Plumtree, who won two key turnovers, were central to a defensive effort that Barrett later compared to running into “a Welsh brick wall.”

What the result means

Wales had won the first three matches in this fixture, in 1905, 1935 and 1953. Some of the greatest players in Welsh rugby history, including Sir Gareth Edwards, Barry John, Phil Bennett, JPR Williams, Shane Williams and Alun Wyn Jones, never beat New Zealand in a Wales shirt.

The 55,152 crowd was the smallest for any of the 14 Wales-New Zealand matches at the Principality Stadium, reflecting how low expectations had fallen after years of struggle on and off the field. It was also a major step up from Wales’s unconvincing 28-21 win over Japan the previous weekend.

For New Zealand, the defeat stings, but it does little damage to their tournament position. After France beat South Africa on Friday, the All Blacks still move above the Springboks to the top of the Nations Championship’s southern section, with one weekend of regular matches left.

Sources: BBC Sport match report, Wales 35-28 New Zealand (November 14, 2026).