Rush says their job was to be disruptive - with coach Laurie Mains' permission - at trainings: "It can tend to be brutal, it was often the dirt trackers against the test team; the front of the bus versus the back.
"Laurie wanted us to mirror what the opposition were going to do. For instance before the England semifinal our job was to kill the ball. There were stitches galore; it was full on - harder than most games."
Former All Blacks loose forward Kevin Schuler was also a DD for most of that tournament: "Laurie also called us driftwood because we'd drift around the paddock holding tackle bags etc. I always loved the chance to get in and be a spoiler, pissing them off. I remember one training I came away with a split head. I put my head down and thought 'bugger it', Laurie said we could have a go, but then Fitzy [Sean Fitzpatrick] came through the ruck and, bang, I went down with plenty of red on the jersey. It got physical - but that's good because you want to replicate the intensity you get in a match.
"However, this week I imagine it came down to man-management for the All Blacks," he said. "You wouldn't risk training Richie McCaw the way his foot is."
One of the regrets of the 1995 DDs is they never got the opportunity to enjoy the traditional night out before the final after half the 36-man squad went down with food poisoning from the Thursday lunch.
Famously, Rush and a few other All Blacks were unscathed: "We didn't get crook because we shot out for KFC. We were sick of eating Laurie's rabbit food bullshit. We sat down for lunch, didn't eat anything, then sneaked out one by one." For the record Rush dobbed in Glen Osborne, Frank Bunce, Walter Little and Zinzan Brooke as fellow fried chicken-eating culprits.
Schuler says it was a tradition the DDs went out in case they drank at the hotel and disrupted the rest of the team.
"Halfway through that dinner, a call came through there were a few sick boys floating around. So the whole team was placed on standby. It wasn't the typical build-up to a test where the DDs got some R&R the night before to bring good luck to the troops."
He also says the current team probably have less downtime in the professional environment: "Nowadays they have more commitments. We would nip down to a mall near our hotel, put $2 in a machine and get 90 seconds worth of basketball shots at a hoop. We also got stuck into the spacies.
"We suffered cars going around the [Johannesburg] hotel with their horns blaring at 4am. Then there was the service elevator, it was like someone was standing there smashing a trolley into its walls deliberately," said Schuler of the dirty tricks.
"A lovely quiet hotel suddenly turned into a factory."
Rush says so many sick bodies meant another factor hurt their 1995 build-up, despite healthy All Blacks being moved to another floor.
"The smell on the other crook floor, Jeez, it was rank. You'd open the lift doors and faaar out ..."
Rush says the team were also sick the day after the final: "I think the pallet of Steinlager might've had more to do with it on that occasion."
