Whenever he sensed the neighbours in Everton getting a bit uppity, Bill Shankly would put them in their place with a solemn declaration delivered in rasping Ayrshire gravity:

“There are only two teams in Liverpool: Liverpool and Liverpool Reserves.’’
Now that South Africa’s irresistible force has put the All Blacks in their place, it does not require too big a leap of the imagination to take Shankly’s pecking order from Sixties’ Merseyside and transplant it some 60 years later at the summit of World Rugby’s global rankings.
A third successive World Cup in Sydney next year would make it diffic...