Bachop had a verbal agreement with coach Laurie Mains that he'd be available for the Cup in South Africa the following May, and Sanix officials happily agreed.
Graeme Bachop playing in 1995. Photo / Photosport
"It was pretty casual," Bachop told me this week. "I was up in Japan training my butt off, but I didn't get any phone calls. For a while I started to wonder if they'd forgotten about me. In the end I got a phone call from Bruiser (All Black loose forward Mike Brewer) and I came back to go to the camp in February in Taupo.
"There was never anything very official. The only written contract I had was with Sanix."
Bachop was outstanding in South Africa, and at the time the unusual situation of his Japanese residence was largely glossed over.
Two. Who is the All Black who sang and played drums on the official video for a 1998 No. 1 New Zealand hit?
Marc Ellis, who still holds the All Black record for the most tries in one game at a World Cup, when he scored six times against Japan in 1995.
An original on the Sky TV show, "The Sports Café", he joined the rest of the cast on the video of a remake of the Fred Dagg song "We Don't Know How Lucky We Are", which topped New Zealand charts.
Former All Black Marc Ellis. Photo / Photosport
Three. Who is the 2003 World Cup All Black forward who can converse in Hungarian?
Prop Dave Hewett can speak reasonable Hungarian. In 1984, when he was 13, his family moved to Hungary while his father worked as an agricultural adviser to the Hungarian government.
"We learned enough of the language to get by reasonably well," he's said. There was no chance in then communist Hungary to keep playing the rugby Hewett had started at the Cheviot area school in Canterbury. "Hungary had 10 million people at the time, and there were only four rugby teams in the whole country."
Four. In the 2015 World Cup-winning All Blacks, who was a competent knitter?
Dan Carter, who, he told a TVNZ reporter in 2014, learned to knit passing time as a boarder at Christchurch Boys' High.
Five. Dave Solomon was the first All Black born in American Samoa when he played against Australia in 1931. Who was the second American Samoan-born All Black, who played in both the 2011 and 2015 World Cups?
Jerome Kaino, who was born at what is now known as the Lyndon B. Johnson Medical Center in Pago Pago, the capital of American Samoa. "That's why I'm technically American," he said in his 2014 autobiography. "I even have the passport."
Jerome Kaino. Photo / Photosport
Six. Which All Black curated a gold CD for Sony Music in 1999?
Jonah Lomu, who put together a collection of his favourite music, for an album called "Jonah" by the record company, with tracks ranging from Bob Marley to Auckland soul group Ardijah.
Seven. Who was the last son of an All Black to play for the All Blacks?
Anton Oliver took over as captain of the All Blacks from Todd Blackadder, and led the team in ten tests in 2001. Anton's father, Frank, led the All Blacks in three tests against the Wallabies in 1978.
Eight. Who was the 2007 World Cup All Black able to recite the dialogue from the 1965 Julie Andrews movie, "The Sound Of Music"?
The late Jerry Collins, who said that as a child in Apia in Samoa in the 1980s he saw the film "about 50 times". There were only three movies at the local cinema, he'd recall, the Julie Andrews tale of the Von Trapp family, the 1954 Hollywood musical, "Seven Brides For Seven Brothers", and 1982's "Rambo." It was "The Sound Of Music" that stuck in his young mind.
Jerry Collins in 2003. Photo / Photosport
Nine. Who, when he played the first of six one-day internationals for New Zealand in 1993, would become the last so-called Double All Black, playing both rugby and cricket for his country?
Jeff Wilson, who amazingly was not only good enough to play rugby and cricket at international level, but also, as a schoolkid, was in the Southland under-18 basketball team which won the South Island championships, coached by future Tall Blacks coach, Tab Baldwin. Wilson says his father had to persuade him to give up his basketball career for rugby.
Ten. Was New Zealand Rugby CEO Mark Robinson, or 1987 World Cup-winning captain David Kirk, the last All Black to be a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University?
It was David Kirk, who left New Zealand at the end of '87 to take up his scholarship at Oxford, where he would play in the famous annual game with Cambridge University at Twickenham. Robinson went to Cambridge University in 1997 for post-graduate work after study at Victoria University in Wellington. He would become an All Black in 2000 after his return from England.
