Forty seconds into the test, I'm counter-rucking, pushing against Jerry Collins, when their hooker, Keven Mealamu, grabs my left leg and tries to uproot me. He fails, at first. Tana Umaga, my opposite number, comes from the other side.
I can guess what he's thinking because I've been in his shoes a thousand times. If you're gonna come looking for ball in our ruck, you're gonna get smashed.
By the time Umaga wraps an arm around my right thigh and Mealamu grabs me again - lower down by my left knee - the ball has left the hands of their halfback, Justin Marshall, and Richie McCaw is gathering it 10m away.
What happens next becomes excruciating in more ways than one.
First, the experience of being picked up, then dropped from a height, head first and helpless, my shoulder dislocated a split-second after I stretch out my right arm to break the fall, my tour over.
Then, and probably for ever, the sick feeling in my stomach whenever I'm asked to relive the incident, as if I'm being asked for the very first time, not the 500th.
After they've given me a shot of morphine to dull the pain and yanked my shoulder back into its socket, after a Kiwi medic has asked me for the shirt off my back, after the All Blacks have dominated and won 21-3, the nightmare continues.
The TV footage that captures the incident best is seen as either incriminating or inconclusive, depending on who's watching. It shows Mealamu and Umaga grabbing my legs from either side and lifting me off the ground, but there's no clear angle of me being turned upside-down and dropped.
The South African citing officer decides there's no case to answer. When Clive complains, he's accused of trying to take the focus from our defeat, of burying bad news with a PR ruse. The All Blacks and New Zealand media finger Alastair Campbell as the spin doctor working overtime.
At an early-morning press conference, I'm asked for my reaction and I've got no problem calling it as I see it. I speak up because I'm a competitor, and if you take away - unfairly - my ability to compete, then I'm going to respond. I don't possess the equanimity to take a pounding like that and say nothing, to put it down as part of the game. Because it isn't.
I describe it as deliberate foul play, dangerous, a cheap shot. I say I feel angry, cheated, disappointed with Tana - as a fellow captain - for not coming over as they stretchered me off.
Clive asks if I want to stay with the squad or go home for my operation. As tour captain, I feel I should see it out. But the controversy over my injury is a story that keeps on giving, and for the next two weeks, there's no escape. It keeps dominating the sports pages: picked apart, polarising opinion, taking on a life of its own. Staying on is one of the biggest mistakes of my life.
I go out most evenings, trying to pass the time with friends who have travelled over, but mostly it makes me feel worse, not better. I'm a sitting duck and locals want their say. Not much of it is sympathetic.
"Why are you making such a big deal out of it?" "Couldn't you just have sucked it up?"
Like I'm the guilty party.
We lose the second test by 30 points when Dan Carter runs amok.
I stay, feeling increasingly useless. I turn up at training with my arm in a sling. Jonny Wilkinson kicks balls and I run after them, like a wounded dog, until he can't take it any more and tells me to stop.
Our final ignominy comes in the third test at Eden Park. The lads front up in brutally-difficult circumstances but we're put away again by an awesome rugby team, beaten by double scores.
When I'm back at the Leinster training ground, there's a videotape in my cubby-hole and a note that says: "I think you might like to have this."
It's from an Irish supporter, perfectly placed at Jade Stadium that night to capture the incident on his hand-held camcorder. A huge sense of relief comes over me when I watch it. After all the talking - all the accusations and denials - the film doesn't lie. It shows me being dropped from a height, upside-down and fully extended. It says more about the moment than the millions of words already written and spoken.
Better late than never, the International Rugby Board responds.
"We are determined that such tackles are removed from the game," they say. "They're totally unacceptable and have absolutely no place in rugby."
All Blacks coach Graham Henry is asked about the new footage. He sighs. He hasn't seen it.
"I just think it's ridiculous, quite frankly," he says.
He's disappointed the question is being asked of him, four months on.
I agree with him on one thing, that it's time to draw a line - preferably for ever.
Wishful thinking.
The next time I see Tana, it's 2009. He's coaching in Toulon, and Leinster are on a pre-season camp in Nice. I spot him watching us from a distance and, when I walk towards him, I can hear Mal O'Kelly's voice behind me. "Do him, Drico! Do him!"
I shake Tana's hand and ask him how he is. I don't carry grudges. Never have. We talk about this and that. He doesn't mention 2005 and I don't have any interest in bringing up past history. What's done is done.
If only.
Like the hat-trick in Paris, it finds its way into the footage that defines my career. It follows me around like a dark cloud, growing more distant, it's true, but never quite fading away to nothing, forcing me to keep answering the same questions from which no good can ever come.
Can you remind us about what happened? I'd rather not.
Do you think you were targeted, deliberately taken out? No.
Do you think they meant to injure you? No.
So it wasn't malicious? No. It was two guys trying to put down a marker in the first minute. But it was incredibly careless.
Are you still bitter about it? I'm not bitter, I'm just bored. Bored and weary.
Bored of being asked about it. Bored of repeating myself. Bored of having to defend myself - as well as the two lads - when I did nothing wrong and the laws of the game were changed as a consequence of what happened that day.
Weary of having to bring it up again in these pages, even though I know I must. Weary of leaving myself open again to the same old stuff...
Still whingeing after all these years! Cry baby! Sook! Can't he ever let it lie?
Wishing I could wipe it from the collective memory, so that when the Lions tour New Zealand in 2017, nobody will think of mentioning it.
But sometimes, in sport, you don't get to choose all the things they remember you for.
