Cold cases - both real and created - are all the rage. Enter the 1995 Rugby World Cup final poisoning allegations, complete with enough shadowy figures to keep a John Le Carre fan intrigued.
We all love a whodunit: in this case the dead body consists of a few sick ones and All Black pride. The fact is, we still have no idea if there was a crime at all and collating loose references does not change that.
A Herald feature on the 1995 tournament revisited the allegation that the All Blacks were deliberately poisoned before the the final in Johannesburg. It drew a huge response on the Herald website - after all these years, we still can't get enough of a topic that overshadows the final itself and South Africa's stoic victory.
Raking over old rugby coals is fascinating but in this case the evidence of skulduggery is flimsy at best. When added to the history of All Black World Cup "failures" and reactions that sound like excuses, it makes us look like poor, result-obsessed losers who have lost some of the joys of sport.
The poisonous characters offered up over the years - a waitress, a businessman, a bookie - are so shadowy they don't even have proper names. The people offering them up - those from within the All Blacks camp - are hardly impartial investigators. Unless committed detectives and/or investigators take this up, it is merely a file gathering dust and the more the better quite frankly.
There is no perfect way of dealing with a topic like this. The subject is irresistible and the media can't totally ignore it. Continual references keep prising minds open, but unlike the cases on crime channels and in the news the chances of DNA-class evidence emerging are close to zero.
Bottom line: it must take a lot more than what we have been told over the years to convince anybody of anything. And don't forget, the Springboks were not implicated in any way and their victory does not deserve to be tainted. They deserve full acknowledgement - without proviso - of being true world champions in 1995. That case is closed, whatever lies ahead.