KEY POINTS:
Deep, deep into a west London night back in '99, a brazen Kiwi on his OE spotted a group of Wallabies celebrating as if they'd won the World Cup - appropriate really, seeing as they had.
Fuelled by lager and an ever-increasing, though delusional, sense of injustice, the New Zealander approached a senior Wallaby and said "you're just lucky you didn't have to play the ABs in the final".
The Wallaby, without hesitation, summoned his best Queen's English and replied: "Mate, you ****s were ****ed as soon as you moved Cullen from fullback."
Cullen, of course, was a Christian, but he wasn't a centre. However, he wore 13 on his back at this tournament while Jeff Wilson, one of New Zealand's finest wingers, was fullback.
It was just one of a number of decisions by the New Zealand selectors that led to this campaign having the most bitter of aftermaths.
Strange decisions included:
* Taine Randell as captain despite his clearly not having the support of some senior players.
* Picking the increasingly immobile Robin Brooke because of his experience and physicality, then not letting him use strong-arm tactics.
* Selecting Byron Kelleher to start ahead of Justin Marshall in the ill-fated semifinal against France.
* Giving the players a week's R&R in France during the tournament.
But most believe the most pivotal decision centred on, well, centre. After dream 1996 and 1997 campaigns, the wheels fell off in 1998 and the All Blacks lost every Tri Nations and Bledisloe Cup test.
Some decisions by the previously untouchable Christian Cullen raised questions.
A whispering campaign in the media started pushing for the more solid Wilson - who was Cullen's first roommate as an All Black - to be shifted to fullback, a position he played as a schoolkid and one he made no secret of coveting.
That allowed Tana Umaga to play at right wing but it was considered suicide not to have the precociously talented Cullen in the side, so he was moulded into an adequate left wing. When Jonah Lomu came back into the frame, Daryl Gibson was bumped and Cullen was the owner of a troublesome No 13 jersey.
It was by no means an awful configuration. Wilson could have played anywhere from 10 to 15 and he had been brilliant in 15 for the Highlanders. Cullen had the strength and speed to cover some aspects of 13, if not the vision or distribution skills.
Coach John Hart would later say he hadn't been happy with Cullen's communication at the back and wished he had shifted him earlier.
Cullen, in his biography, said that, initially, being shifted from fullback was "hard to take" and "I thought that Alama Ieremia or Pita Alatini could have done a better job for me".
But here's what resulted (and was what the Wallaby was saying): teams started kicking deep to the All Blacks without real fear of retribution. When Cullen was back there, opponents didn't kick the ball back knowing it was just as likely to be returned with interest. Suddenly the All Blacks forwards found a lot of the game was being played behind them.
Cullen was a try-scoring freak, going at a ratio of close to 1:1 for most of his career, and had notched 30 in 35 tests before the World Cup. At the '99 World Cup he was near impotent, crossing the line just once in a gimme 101-3 devastation of Italy. Ironically, he played only eight minutes in that match, starting in every other.
Defensively, the All Blacks began to look a lot more fragile. Well, they did against France anyway.
It wasn't by any means the only reason New Zealand failed to win the World Cup. The main reason was that, in the space of a year, John Hart lost 260 international caps in Sean Fitzpatrick, Zinzan Brooke, Michael Jones and Frank Bunce.
No coach (people tend to forget the brilliance of the All Blacks under Hart in 1996 and '97) could recover from that blow.
But it's the nature of the All Black beast that he'll be forever critiqued for what he did with those still there, particularly Cullen.
