Former All Blacks coach Laurie Mains still insists his side were poisoned before the 1995 World Cup final, and says Jonah Lomu was wrongly denied a try.
The decider at Ellis Park saw the Springboks stun the heavily favoured All Blacks 15-12 after extra time.
Mains stepped down as New Zealand coach soon after, but three decades later, he is still adamant something sinister happened in the build-up.
“I’ve never stopped thinking about it,” he told Dom Harvey’s podcast. “It’s not that we lost. It was a great game. It’s not even how we lost.
“I’ll still maintain that Jonah would have scored a try when he got pulled back for a forward pass. It wasn’t a forward pass. When you study it on TV, it certainly wouldn’t have been called back today.”
Mains claims several players fell violently ill after drinking tea and coffee at their Johannesburg hotel two days before the final.
“When we came back from dinner on the Thursday night, Zinzan Brooke was standing at reception,” he said. “I turned to [manager] Colin [Meads] and said, ‘There are problems.’ Half the team were up in the doc’s room vomiting and they’re sick as hell.
“We normally had a captain’s run on the Friday, but I called it off because the players couldn’t concentrate. The worst moment in my coaching career was seeing that team go out and play, knowing they probably couldn’t give better than 85%.”
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Mains believes three players who missed the drinks were the only ones unaffected, and that a mysterious waitress spiked them on behalf of UK bookmakers.
“There was no doubt that we were poisoned,” he said. “A private detective found she was hired on the Wednesday, served that batch of tea and coffee on Thursday, and disappeared completely. Staff were convinced she’d done it.”
The alleged saboteur became known as “Suzie” – a nickname Mains admits came from him.
“Eion Edgar told me in London the word in financial circles was the bookies arranged our food poisoning. The New Zealand Rugby Union didn’t want to pursue it, so I hired the detective myself,” he said.
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While many have dismissed the poisoning theory, Mains remains resolute.
“When you see Craig Dowd and Jeff Wilson vomiting on the side of the field, it’s only someone like Keith Quinn that would say the story was made up – I found that unbelievable,” he said.
“I think people were incredibly sympathetic, and they believed we were the best team anyway. If we had won that game, I would have said that’s one of the greatest sporting achievements of all time, given the circumstances that faced those All Blacks.”
Photo: Mike Hewitt/Getty Images
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