'So many conspiracies': All Blacks legends relive the 1995 final ahead of rematch

Mike Bowen had already started to “freak out” by the time Ian Jones knocked on the door of the All Blacks’ doctor’s room at the team’s Johannesburg hotel.

It was about 1am on the eve of the much-anticipated 1995 Rugby World Cup final, and the All Blacks’ starting lock was the 18th crook player to report to him.

They all had diarrhoea or were vomiting. Some had both, meaning players were regularly scooting to and from the toilet.

Amongst those to have beaten Jones to Bowen was flanker Josh Kronfeld and centre Frank Bunce, who recalled seeing wing Jeff Wilson and prop Craig Dowd bent over and vomiting.

“I remember telling [Bowen] I was queasy and had the s...., going into his room and there were people all over the place in different states of illness,” Bunce recalled this week.

“He opened the door and basically said I was the least of his worries.”

The All Blacks had been dropping like flies since lunch on the Thursday, the start of a saga which soon had All Blacks coach Laurie Mains maintaining the team was poisoned by a waitress who has become known as “Suzie”.

Mains went on to hire a private investigator, who he claimed established a woman had been employed by the hotel two days before the All Blacks arrived and promptly disappeared after they started falling ill.

Rory Steyn, a former top South African police commander involved with All Blacks security, accused betting syndicates of being behind the poisoning.

However, almost three decades since the zapped All Blacks came up short, exactly what happened isn’t clear.

“The only people that will know if it was done on purpose is the people that did it,” Kronfeld told from France this week.

"There are so many conspiracies surrounding that...it's fantastic, and it will continue to be one of the great stories.”

While some believe the urns of coffee and tea the team drank from at lunch were the source, Kronfeld said he didn’t touch them and believes it was the chicken and beef burgers on offer.

And not just because Wilson, one of the sickest players struck down, gobbled up two of the chicken variety.

“They had make your own burgers, and I just remember there was chicken, and looking at them and thinking, 'f...! I'm not going near those.’.

“I asked the guy, and he said they were green. Chicken and green don't really go together, maybe they were full of herbs. But I wasn't going near them and just had the beef. I got stomach cramps and had a couple of days of being loose and it going straight through me, but I wasn't like the other boys with the vomiting and not being able to keep food down."

Whatever the source, all but the few All Blacks who ate elsewhere were sick. As was Mains and manager Colin Meads, a couple of days before the biggest match of their lives, played on June 24, 1995.

Jones spent the hours after visiting Bowen convincing himself he had to eat, and that he would mentally be up for what was to come.

However, when the team assembled ahead of their captain’s run on the Friday, it was clear they were in a bad state.

“We were a very disciplined, routine side and I remember 10am Friday morning we would always have a meeting before we went to the ground for a captain's run, and we were normally sharp and ready to go,” Jones recalled this week.

“On that particular day, we came in like Brown’s cows, we weren't kind of where this team had been or should have been. So that showed some of the impact in the build up."

THE GAME

Josh Kronfeld knew it was coming.

All Blacks teammate Andrew Mehrtens had earlier missed a drop goal late in regulation, and it was obvious Joel Stranksy was going to attempt one from the pocket if the Springboks could clear the ball from a scrum set just outside New Zealand’s 22.

But, a couple of minutes into the second half of extra time, the openside flanker didn’t have the juice in his legs to break off the scrum and put heat on the Springboks’ No 10.

“That's the bit I do remember, that drop kick, quite clearly. I remember coming off the scrum and trying to run and my legs being dead and there was just nothing there. I didn't have the mental drive to get out and put any pressure on. Mehrts got out there a little bit, but the rest is history."

Indeed, Stranksy’s drop goal put the Boks 15-12 up, before they held firm to be crowned world champions.

The All Blacks, having lit up the tournament on the back of wing Jonah Lomu’s heroics, had to settle for second.

Defeat stung. And it wasn’t diminished by the fact almost the entire match-day 21 could have fallen back on the excuse of being physically weakened.

"Never. Never in my life. Apparently they've made a movie (Invictus) of it, which I also haven't seen,” Jones said when asked if he’d watched the game since.

Bunce, who said he never for a moment thought the All Blacks wouldn’t win during the game, and Kronfeld are in the same boat.

However, they had varying views on what they could have done differently during a game the All Blacks mustered just three Mehrtens penalty goals and a lone drop goal.

Jones wonders if the All Blacks would have been better off opting for a short 22m restart and attempting to win the ball back instead of kicking long in extra time, while Bunce simply rues not giving Lomu enough room and not being more adventurous when time was almost up.

Kronfeld believes the All Blacks were guilty of going to Lomu too early and too often.

“We didn’t change what we were doing because maybe the mental aptitude wasn’t there, the fatigue and what not...we were just so used to being able to penetrate out wide and that’s what we were doing.”

Despite the result, all three were nonetheless quick to recall fond memories of what was a momentous occasion; one Springboks captain Francois Pienaar said “changed South Africa forever”.

Having watched Nelson Mandela, the black freedom fighter turned president of a divided nation, walk on to the Ellis Park turf ahead of kickoff wearing a Springboks jersey and cap, there was no begrudging the hosts.

"The impact of Mandela was just, far out, even bigger than what you thought. His impact was just phenomenal standing there. He walked out, and it's gone from what you thought was a peak excitement to through the roof,” Jones said.

THE PRESENT

While Bunce will tune into Sunday’s final from his Pukekohe home, Jones and Kronfeld have been in France since the quarterfinals and will be at Stade de France to watch the second World Cup final between New Zealand and South Africa in person.

“I’m hoping they’re not going to make a movie of the game," Jones quipped, referring to Clint Eastwood’s Invictus.

That said, like Bunce and, to an extent, Kronfeld, Jones is confident the All Blacks will edge out their old foes to become the first team to win the Webb Ellis Cup four times.

Twenty-eight years after the exhausted All Blacks came up short, fatigue is his reasoning, too.

“The South Africans have had to go to the well against the French and English, and I think they'll be absolutely emotionally drained, as well as physically drained. To do that a third week in a row is a big ask."

Kronfeld called it a “romantic” final, one he struggled to predict but hoped the All Blacks would edge, while Bunce warned the Springboks’ unconvincing semifinal win against England might well have served as a wake-up call for the reigning champions.

“We didn't need that bloody English result,” Bunce rued. “But we’re in a good space, a lot of guys are in form.

“There's going to be a lot of emotion around it. But I just think we're in a better place, we've got people all over the park that can make a difference."