To the Invictus the spoils...

Phew! Nothing stirs the emotions of a Kiwi rugby fan like a World Cup controversy!

Quite a shock for my wee movie blog to be overrun with rugby fans ...

For those who missed it in the weekend, here's a closer look at the 1995 Rugby World Cup final controversy including comments from some of the men who were there.

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The "Suzie the waitress" incident (according to Wikipedia): "After the defeat, various allegations were made around the lead-up to the final. It was claimed that many of the New Zealand players had been suffering from food poisoning 48 hours prior to the game, which affected their performance in the final. New Zealand coach Laurie Mains alleged a mysterious waitress known as 'Suzie' had deliberately poisoned the All Blacks' water in the week before the final."

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Who said what in 1995

All Blacks team doctor Mike Bowen said he could not discount the possibility the team was "nobbled". "We haven't been able to identify the cause, but the fact that it occurred over such a short time indicates it was food poisoning of some kind," Dr Bowen said the day after the final.

All Blacks coach Laurie Mains said: "It was just an amazing sequence of events and coincidence that, of our 35-man party that ate at that particular lunch venue in the hotel, about 27 of them went down in the space of 12 hours. You can read what you like into that, but I don't think it was coincidence ... I don't have any doubts that it left many of them pretty flat and I think that was a significant factor in us just not quite having the urgency and speed in our game."

More recently

In his 2000 autobiography a South African security guard, assigned to the team, backed up claims suggesting their food was poisoned.

Rory Steyn, a former head of security for South African president Nelson Mandela, wrote in his book, One Step Behind Mandela, that just days before the final the illness hit. "We raced back to the hotel and when I got up to the doctor's room it looked like a battle zone - like a scene from a war movie. Players were lying all over the place and the doctor and physio were walking around injecting them."

Steyn says in the book: "I was a police officer, I worked with facts. What my eyes told me that night was that the team had deliberately been poisoned."

He said the "illness" which had swept through the team had a major impact on the All Blacks' preparation for the final.

"I had to endure accusations of complicity in this, from New Zealand officials, and I was very angry that this was allowed to happen in my country - to people in my care, " Steyn said. "South African rugby fans remained sceptical of this theory and preferred to put it down to sour Kiwi grapes.

"To my fellow South Africans I want to say this: Stop all those cheap jokes about Suzie, the food poisoning and whingeing Kiwis. It happened. There is no doubt that the All Blacks were poisoned two days before the final."

Former All Blacks Sean Fitzpatrick, Eric Rush and Frank Bunce talked about the food poisoning that hit the team on the eve of the 1995 Rugby World Cup final in 2007. Rush seems to think it was suspicious, but says they were disappointed that word of the food poisoning got out "because it just looked like sour grapes". (See the interviews on YouTube under "All Blacks and food poisoning" or click on this link.)

 Today

As you might expect, members of the 1995 All Black Rugby World Cup team are unlikely to be flocking to see the film Invictus, which (spoiler alert!) features their defeat as part of the film's climax.

Former All Blacks coach Laurie Mains says: "I know about the film, I know it's based more on Nelson Mandela than the World Cup, but I don't have any particular desire to go see it."

He says he's been invited to speak at a corporate screening in Dunedin, but other than that he will not go out of his way to see it, and chuckles rather wryly. To his knowledge there was no consultation with the All Blacks over the film.

Mains says he would rather leave the incident in the past. "I don't want to be the one responsible for bringing up that issue again. It's all history for me. I've moved on in my life. Long after I'm dead, people will be talking about the poisoning of the All Blacks, but that's just a fact of life."

Rugby commentator Keith Quinn was also at the World Cup that year and says that in 1995 South Africa felt like a nice place. "I've been there in the apartheid years and been horrified by it".

Quinn has read the book that Invictus is based on, John Carlin's Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Changed a Nation, and says he could not put it down.

However much he enjoyed the book, he found one aspect of it particularly intriguing. "The phrase food poisoning or sickness or illness to the New Zealand players does not emerge at any stage of the story - including the part at the end when he's writing about the World Cup final. Not one reference is made to it.

"That intrigues me. Because if the whole premise of the story is that they were determined to make the event the catalyst to pull South Africa together as one nation, did someone somewhere in Mandela's organisation - and maybe not himself, because he's an honourable man - but maybe someone [thought] ... 'what do we do to make sure of the win? Ah, send this little lady into the hotel and get her to drop some capsules into the milk' or whatever it was and the New Zealand team went sick. Now that's so absent from the writing of Carlin, it made me think: did somebody somewhere in the organisation think 'we've got to make sure that South Africa wins the final'. The absence has created an inference for me.

"I think they suffered food poisoning but they were not food-poisoned. I was [with] an All Blacks team in Sydney once and they suffered terrible food poisoning but no one suggested they were food poisoned."

Quinn says there is no evidence the World Cup All Blacks were poisoned, that someone "nobbled" them.

"There's only a belief that they could have been. The book, which is now the film, suggests to me that they could have been nobbled. It'll be very interesting to see what people think of the film in New Zealand."

Quinn is one All Blacks supporter who is keen to see the film.

But former All Black lock Ian Jones says he has no plans to see it.

"I'm sure it's done pretty nice with Morgan Freeman in it. I'm sure it's fantastic the way they've done it from their perspective, but I've not seen it so I don't know."

Despite the loss, Jones has "wonderful memories" of the time and hopes that the film "will be good for rugby in general". 

"It was great to be involved in all of it. It was a great occasion and obviously the impact that Mandela's made on that country on that particular day is astonishing, astonishing enough to make a Hollywood movie out of it, which says a lot about the man himself."

Jones recalls meeting Mandela as "one of the greatest moments" and "a real privilege - a very inspirational bloke".

He says he was too wrapped up in the rugby at the time to realise the impact the event was having on the country. "But since that occasion I've seen the impact it had on the country. The 'One Country, One Team' slogan they had running, clearly got the momentum behind them.

"It's good for rugby that they've made a movie, I guess. I'm pleased to hear the playing side [of the story] is getting such an airing, which is good globally. Of course, people [here] know how it ends.

"Maybe Peter Jackson could do one and change the ending," Jones says jokingly.

Clint Eastwood

In an interview published in the Adelaide Advertiser, the Invictus director reacted negatively to the suggestion.

The mild-mannered Eastwood, whose demeanour is unfailingly charming, reacts almost viscerally when the alleged food poisoning incident is brought up. "What?" he says, raising his voice slightly. "And Jimmy Dean's alive too, I suppose?"

* Invictus is now screening in New Zealand cinemas.

Have any of these comments changed your mind about the incident? Do you think Invictus will be good for rugby in general?

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