Defeats at Twickenham, rare birds though they are for the All Blacks, lodge in the Kiwi sporting psyche like poisoned daggers. Just ask Sean Fitzpatrick, who in 1993 presided over a 15-9 loss that he would come to regard as an indelible stain. "It became our battle cry, 'Remember '93'," he reflects. "From that day on, we never wanted to go through the same experience again."
For the latest New Zealand vintage, a similarly grim reference point is offered by the shellacking the team suffered in 2012. Variously attributed to the jet heels of Manu Tuilagi and some suspect takeaways from a Malaysian restaurant, which laid several players low, that 38-21 humiliation is one still serving as powerful motivation six years on.
"We don't whinge about it, but we don't forget," Fitzpatrick says. "You can be sure that Kieran Read, who was in the team that day, hasn't forgotten.
"It just shows you that if you take us on, there's always the chance that we might have an off-day. That's what we now realise as All Blacks, that our opponents will often have the game of their lives. Look at England in 2012, or Ireland in 2016, when they beat us in Chicago. Those results are the turning points."
When studying Fitzpatrick's own career, encompassing 92 Tests, 51 as captain, and a record 63 in a row without injury, the series win at Loftus Versfeld in 1996 – New Zealand's first ever on South African soil, creating talk of those All Blacks as "Incomparables" – stands out as perhaps the defining feat. But it is the confrontations at Twickenham that he recalls with the greatest affection. "It's a very intense environment. The crowd aren't right on top of you, like they used to be at Cardiff Arms Park, but you feel the history of the game. As a young boy growing up 12,000 miles away, I never imagined that I would be running out on to the same misty ground where the legends played."
