South Africa were true champions in the 1995 Rugby World Cup final. Photo / Getty
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.
