Wynne Gray's 50 greatest rugby moments: No.45

Springbok rugby players are blindfolded before being taken into the bush during the exercise at Kamp Staaldraad.

Training at altitude and cryotherapy sessions are versions of how staff bring Rugby World Cup squads to peak fitness.

The All Blacks went through a series of SAS sessions before the 1999 tournament and four years later the Springboks were put through the shame of Kamp Staaldraad in preparation for the tournament.

It was a bizarre arrangement on many fronts.

The Springbok squad had been named but coach Rudi Straeuli suggested to them that Camp Barbed Wire would confirm places for the trip to Australia.

He pitched it as a bonding camp but many, including captain Corne Krige, felt degraded and humiliated by their treatment.

The World Cup was only six weeks away but the players all risked serious injury under conditions at this camp, several hours drive north of Pretoria, where Springbok bodyguard Adriaan Heijns recruited five armed Elite Police Task Force members to help him run the session.

It had a military-style emphasis and lasted four days where players were starved, poorly clad, kept awake for long hours and at one stage, had shots fired near them as they thought about a mass exit.

"Its core intent was to break us down mentally and physically," said Krige. "Then presumably, we were to be rebuilt as a strong close-knit unit."

Players marched for hours carrying logs, crawled over rocky ground under barbed wire nets, pumped up rugby balls while submerged in freezing water, spent nights in the bush without food and were pitched into boxing bouts against each other.

They slaughtered then cooked chickens and eggs but were not allowed to eat them, they were ordered, naked, into a tarpaulin-covered pit to listen to looped recordings of the English national anthem and the All Blacks haka as freezing water was poured over them.

Details of the bizarre team-bonding tactics emerged soon after the Springboks 29-9 loss to the All Blacks in the World Cup quarter-final.

Dale McDermott, the team's video analyst who leaked film of the humiliating camp tactics, was ostracised by the South African rugby community and two years later committed suicide at his Durban home.