Out of the clear blue African sky comes a weird sound, almost pure white noise, getting louder and louder. Because the high veld winter is so dry the stands at Ellis Park in Johannesburg, where the final of the 1995 Rugby World Cup is about to be played, are virtually uncovered.
Suddenly a South African Airways 747 jet bursts over the top of the East stand, clearing the upper deck by just 60 metres, and it feels as if the world is one giant wind tunnel. On the undercarriage are the words “Good Luck Bokke”.
When a jumbo jet flies that low over a rugby stadium (the pilot later says he had the plane close to stalling to get down to the altitude he wanted, which suggests one wind shear and 62,000 people could have fried in aviation fuel) the shadow it casts is so vast that for a second the whole ground goes dark. The amazing scene will prove to be just the overture to the most significant rugby test I’ve ever been lucky enough to attend.
That stunning June afternoon announced not only the full return of South Africa to international rugby after a decade of isolation during the last years of their government’s racist apartheid era, but also the end of a century of rugby being an amateur sport. (The day before the final a US$555 million television deal for Southern Hemisphere rugby to go professional had been announced.)
After 20 minutes of extra time the Springboks, banned from the first two World Cups, would take the title at their first attempt, beating the All Blacks 15-12.
I was there for the week of the final, joining Bob Howitt, the founder and editor of Rugby News magazine, and legendry photographer, Peter Bush, at what other journalists called the Death Motel in Johannesburg.
A couple of weeks before I arrived, Bob had been lucky to emerge alive from an armed robbery in the motel’s office.
There was barbed wire around the perimeter wall, and an armed guard at the gate, but this assault came from within. The robbers had booked a room at the motel.
Bob, in pre-internet days, was filing his stories by fax at the office. Late at night, he realised he had one small story he hadn’t sent, and headed to the office.
He’s barely in the door when a gun is thrust in his face, and a man demands he hand over his wallet. For reasons he later puts down to shock, Bob says he doesn’t have it with him. In fact, the wallet is in the back pocket of his jeans.
One of the other gang members sees it and rips it out so violently the pocket tears off. “You lied,” says the gunman, and holds his pistol in Bob’s face. “Now I’m going to kill you.”
The desk clerk, a stately man with more than a passing physical resemblance to Nelson Mandela, intervenes. “Don’t shoot him,” he says. “He is a very well-known New Zealand journalist and it will reflect badly on our nation.”
Amazingly, the patriotic plea works. Bob is hit on the side of the head with the butt of the gun, and then he and the receptionist are locked in a broom closet. By the time they break out, the robbers have gone.
One quiet afternoon I spoke with the man at the desk. “I know the man who did it,” he said. “He’s from my tribe. I will find him one day.” He paused, and quietly – which made his statement even more chilling – said, “And when I find him I will kill him.”
Johannesburg in 1995 was a dangerous, scary place. It was said you could hire an AK-47 for the day for 25 rand (at the time about $8).
But on the day of the Cup final, rugby fever had seized the country’s largest city. The World Cup, not the soaring crime rate, was the talk of the town.
In what played out like a Hollywood script, the two greatest rivals in the game, South Africa and New Zealand, would be playing for the ‘95 title.
In the All Blacks’ semifinal, where they beat England, 49-25, it felt right that giant wing, Jonah Lomu, would score an iconic try by running over the poor English fullback, Mike Catt, with the ease of a smoker scrubbing out a cigarette butt under his shoe. The All Blacks had been the sensations of the tournament. They were spearheaded by Lomu, who quickly became the best-known rugby player in history, lauded in American magazines like Time and Sports Illustrated.
The Boks, on the other hand, only just made the final. In the first semifinal, played in torrential rain in Durban between South Africa and France, a 50/50 call saved South Africa. Welsh referee Derek Bevan didn’t award what replays showed what seemed to be a fairly obvious try to French No 8 Abdel Benazzi, and the Boks sneaked their way through, 19-15.
But the final would be a very different beast.
In their changing room, the All Blacks don’t see the plane. But when they came blinking into the sunlight on the ground they felt electricity in the air.
“I saw [President] Nelson Mandela in [Boks’ captain Francois] Pienaar’s jersey,” All Black captain Sean Fitzpatrick says later, “and I thought, ‘Uh-oh, this is interesting.’”
Pienaar is so wound up he can’t sing the South African national anthem. He stays with his jaw clenched through the verses in five languages, knowing that if he starts to sing he’ll burst into tears.
In the first ruck, Fitzpatrick was grabbed in the groin by his opposing hooker, Chris Rossouw, and upended. “I knew it was on then.”
Lomu is on everyone’s mind. Fitzpatrick had received a letter from a Kiwi schoolboy that said, “The rest of you just pass the ball to Jonah.”
In fact that was actually the plan, but the South Africans had one too. Technically they played an outside-in defence, looking at pincering Lomu so he couldn’t beat his marker, James Small, who Lomu outweighed by 30kg, on the outside. In less clinical terms, lock Kobus Wiese, a man even bigger than Lomu, said to Small, “Just cling on to him, and I’ll f*** him up.”
Basically that was the story of the game. Small flung himself at Lomu like a rabid fox terrier, and other Springboks quickly arrived to help him. Lomu, who scored four tries in the England semifinal, couldn’t get across the line in the final.
The match was tied 12-all after 80 minutes, and in extra time the Boks’ first-five, Joel Stranksy, dropped a goal. The Boks had won the Cup at their first attempt, 15-12.
As corny as it sounds, the one night when crime took a holiday in Jo’burg was the night after the final. I saw white and black people dancing in clubs together, and for several giddy hours, the concept of a true Rainbow Nation seemed a possibility.
Three years later, having had time to reflect, Fitzpatrick says in his book Turning Point that “I was disappointed [about the result], but it was fantastic to be part of that final. You felt you were part of something, part of history, part of another major step in the reunification of a country.”
The day after the final I was at the team’s hotel in Johannesburg, looking to finish a book I was writing with Mike Brewer. Most of the players were drowning their sorrows with an intensity that threatened to drink the house bar dry.
The first person I saw was a completely sober Brian Lochore, the side’s campaign manager. At the press conference after the final, not a word had been said about any food poisoning. Now he had something to share. “We kept it quiet,” he said, “but a lot of them were really crook. It’s a wonder we even got 15 guys on the field for the final.”
In the years since, speculation over what happened to the All Blacks has raged. Coach Laurie Mains believed they were deliberately poisoned, by a waitress called Suzie. At the other end of the spectrum, some even claimed the whole illness story was a feeble All Black excuse for the loss.
Here’s what I know. On the day after the final Lochore and the team manager Colin Meads, hardly men known for being full of excuses, both said many team members had been sick. Meads himself had fallen ill during the week. “I woke up like a cow with grass staggers”. was how he described it.
In 2014 for a World Cup book, I checked with all of the 15 All Blacks who started the final. Nine of them had been ill with food poisoning in the days before the game, the symptoms ranging from throwing up, to diarrhoea, to night sweats, to splitting headaches. To this day, with no signed confession to settle the issue, we still don’t know for sure what caused the illness.
The last full tour of South Africa, in 1996, would finally bring what had eluded the All Blacks since 1928, a test series win in South Africa.
“My feeling was that some of the younger guys didn’t really know how much it meant in terms of the long history between the two countries,” said captain Sean Fitzpatrick. “So we spoke about the history as a team. [1956 All Black fullback] Don Clarke came in and talked with us about it.”
Now coached by John Hart, there was a Tri-Nations test in Cape Town, won 29-18, and then an official three-test series began. The All Blacks took the first test in Durban 23-19, and the series moved on to the Republic’s capital Pretoria for what would prove the defining All Black game of the year. Win at Loftus Versfeld and the series was New Zealand’s.
“I got a hint of what the series meant to people in New Zealand, just as I was leaving my hotel room to go down to the bus to go to the ground,” says Fitzpatrick. “The phone rang, and some guy said, ‘Is that Sean Fitzpatrick?’ I said yes, it is. He said, ‘I just want to wish you luck.’
“I said, ‘Where are you?’ He said, ‘I’m in Gisborne, and we’re having a big piss-up, and we’re going to watch the game. I just wanted to make sure you knew we were backing you.’”
There was a quiet confidence in the All Black ranks. Centre Frank Bunce would later say, “We all knew each other’s play very well, and we were good friends too. There were a lot of guys in that team at the peak of their powers.
“We had really quick players in Christian Cullen, Jeff Wilson, and Glen Osborne, and we were playing in Pretoria on top of the ground in blazing sunshine. I’ve often said that if you can’t play good rugby in South Africa you won’t play it anywhere. That place is just made for playing rugby, the stadiums, the climate, everything.”
It took every ounce of belief and grit they had for the All Blacks to win.
Near the death, the All Blacks were ahead 33-26, but a converted try would have drawn the match, and saved the series, for South Africa, who were awarded a penalty 10 metres from the New Zealand line with 60 seconds to play.
“I still use that last minute in presentations to this day to illustrate that undying will to win,” says Fitzpatrick. “When they got that penalty I can clearly remember seeing [No 8] Zinny Brooke down in the starting blocks position, and the other guys making sure there was no way they were going to score the try.”
The elation on the field was a contrast to scenes of total exhaustion back in the changing room, where coach Hart allowed media and supporters to congratulate the players.
Fitzpatrick recalled that “Don Clarke was there crying. Saying, ‘Thank you, thank you so much for doing something we tried to do for years but couldn’t achieve.’ I thought that sort of summed it up, what it meant to New Zealand.”
There have been times since, in what sadly feels like the distant past, when the Wallabies have had golden patches, and loomed as more of a threat to the All Blacks than South Africa.
But at World Cups, the Springboks have fought their way back, with further wins in 2007, 2019, and 2023, to being today’s yardstick of world rugby excellence.
In his autobiography this year, great All Black lock Sam Whitelock remembers getting out of bed as a 6-year-old to watch the 1995 World Cup final and being “absolutely heartbroken by the result”.
As an All Black, he says, “After any game against the Boks, all the brutality of the previous 80 minutes is immediately put to the side. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing away, at home, or in a World Cup, the relationship doesn’t matter. Tests against the Boks have always been my favourite to play.”
In Johannesburg at 3am New Zealand Time, on Father’s Day, Sunday, September 1, the latest fascinating chapter in a 103-year arm wrestle awaits.
Phil Gifford has twice been judged New Zealand sportswriter of the year, has won nine New Zealand and two Australasian radio awards, and been judged New Zealand Sports Columnist of the year three times. In 2010 he was honoured with the SPARC lifetime achievement award for services to sports journalism.