Great Indignations
10. The Changing Room Haka
In 2005 the All Blacks played Wales in Cardiff. It was a special fixture as it was the 100th anniversary of the first clash between these two great rugby nations – a game made famous by one of the greatest injustices of them all – the refusal to award the All Blacks a try they thought Bob Deans had scored.
To honour the occasion, the All Blacks agreed to a Welsh Rugby Union request to replicate exactly the pre-match events of 1905. That meant the haka would be performed before the Welsh national anthem. There was a reluctance to agree to this as the All Blacks didn’t want to set a precedent for future games. And sure enough, when they returned to Cardiff the following year, the WRU asked for the same pre-match order as 2005.
The All Blacks were not going to agree this time. There was no history to honour. The two unions squabbled all week leading into the fixture but the Welsh wouldn’t budge.
So the All Blacks decided they wouldn’t do the haka on the field. Instead they did it in the changing room and there were 80,000 angry people in the stadium when the game started after the national anthems and no haka.
When the big screen then showed images of the All Blacks doing the haka in their changing room, there was widespread booing. People had spent big money to be there and the haka is a big part of the package. There was anger they had been denied the chance to see it properly.
9. Losing the Plot
Fiji were astonished at first and then later bitter that three massive refereeing blunders cost them a straight passage to the 1999 World Cup quarter-finals.
In their critical game against France, New Zealand referee Paddy O’Brien had what he called “a train crash of a game”.
First he denied Fiji a legitimate try. They had caught the French fullback in a pincer tackle, the ball jolted loose and they hacked on and scored. O’Brien, though, saw a knock-on no one else in the world did.
Then he missed three blatant forward passes in the build-up to a French try and, amazingly, with Fiji under pressure on their own line during a series of scrummages, he awarded a penalty try after French hooker Marc Del Maso popped up.
Those decisions allowed the French to win the game 28-19, with O’Brien telling journalists after the game: “I lost the plot.” Working as a pundit for British TV, All Black captain Sean Fitzpatrick said of O’Brien’s performance: “He will look back on this and learn from his mistakes.”
8. The Quick Lineout
The Irish were left flabbergasted when referee Jonathan Kaplan awarded Mike Phillips a try in their Six Nations encounter this year.
The Welsh halfback had been able to run 45 metres after a quick lineout to score in the corner. Before awarding the try, Kaplan asked his Scottish touch judge Peter Allan whether the Welsh had used the same ball at the lineout that had been cleared into touch by Ireland’s Johnny Sexton.
When Allan said yes, Kaplan gave the score. How Allan had missed the fact that Welsh hooker Matthew Rees had not used the same ball that had been cleared by Sexton remains a mystery the Irish feel quite bitter about.
Rees had been thrown a different ball by one of the ball-boys at Millennium Stadium and the rules of the game are quite clear – any quick throw in must be taken with the ball that was put out and it can’t have been touched by anyone other than the man who took it out or the man taking the quick throw.
Ireland lost 19-13 and captain Brian O’Driscoll was outraged. “I didn’t see it myself but when half your team is saying it you take their word for it,” he said. “I tried to relate that to Jonathan Kaplan and the touch judge and they were having none of it. I did mention it to him a few minutes later after I had seen it on TV and I told him that it was a massive momentum swinger and that it had had a huge bearing on the game, but he just shrugged that off.
“Games hang in the balance on decisions, everyone is human and wrong calls are made sometimes, but some are unforgivable.” IRB referee boss Paddy O’Brien actually apologised to the Irish team after the game, admitting that the try should never have been allowed.
7. Knock Out Punch
It is laughed about now, seen as more of an oddity than an injustice; one of those curious incidents belonging to a different era that was less sanitised.
Maybe even Welsh lock Huw Richards will have seen the funny side of being sent off in the semi-final of the 1987 World Cup. Maybe.
What actually happened was that Richards and All Black lock Gary Whetton were having a scuffle. It was all fairly lame – real handbag-swinging stuff that frankly quite a few girls would have been embarrassed to have been part of.
Enter Buck Shelford.
He may have been looking to show these two how to do it properly or maybe he was just plain angry at seeing such weak punches…whatever, he landed a king hit on Richards and knocked the Welshman out cold. End of fight.
And it should really have been the end of Shelford on that particular afternoon. He had knocked Richards down in full view of referee Kerry Fitzgerald.
Shelford stood around sheepishly fearing a red card was coming his way. He was kind of right – the red card was coming, but it was shown to Richards. Well, it was shown after he regained consciousness – Fitzgerald punishing the Welshman for starting the fight in the first place.
6. Injured or Dropped?
After the All Blacks had suffered a heartbreaking defeat to the Wallabies in the 2001 Tri Nations, New Zealand rugby was sent into crisis mode as All Black coach Wayne Smith unexpectedly stood down.
There was a hurried appointment process and the job went to Chiefs coach John Mitchell who was young, relatively inexperienced and perhaps the surprise choice.
Once appointed, Mitchell gave the impression he wanted to establish his authority, make everyone aware that reputations wouldn’t count for much.
When he announced his first squad in November for a tour to Scotland, Ireland and Argentina, there was no Christian Cullen, Taine Randell or Jeff Wilson.
All three had been dropped according to Mitchell, though Cullen had in fact been declared unavailable by the medics on account of having a knee injury. The distinction was critical. First there was the damage to Cullen’s reputation. Then there was the distrust he felt for the coach and, finally, there was the issue of payment; if Cullen had been dropped he wouldn’t have been entitled to any All Black fees. But if he were injured, he would be.
Cullen was angry that he had to fight to get public acknowledgement of his injury and the subsequent payment and the bad blood between the All Black fullback and Mitchell simmered.
Cullen, for some reason, fell out of favour after he recovered and was subjected to some harsh treatment from Mitchell.
Relations hit a nadir in 2003 when Mitchell publicly detailed Cullen’s weaknesses and suggested he was only the fourth best fullback in the country.
To no one’s surprise, Cullen, an All Black legend, headed to Munster later that year, harbouring a sense of injustice – felt by the rest of the nation.
5. The Non Spear Tackle
When it happened, it was so quick and so far from the ball, no one had any sense of it.
But after the All Blacks had easily beaten the British Lions in the first test of the series in 2005, it became clear the incident after 41 seconds was going to be headline news for weeks to come.
Lions skipper Brian O’Driscoll was taken out of a ruck – a long way from the ball – by Tana Umaga and Keven Mealamu and then clumsily put to the ground. The Irishman dislocated his shoulder and his series was over.
It looked like he had been the victim of an illegal and dangerous spear tackle but when the incident was put to citing commissioner William Venter, he dismissed it. The Lions were almost apoplectic with rage.
The incident, even most New Zealanders would agree, looked bad and worthy of some kind of punishment. The Lions had lost their skipper after less than a minute and they were angry that nothing was going to be done.
The day after the test, they called a press conference in Wellington where they showed the incident to the gathered media from new angles and vented their outrage. They continued to vent all week but to no avail – the All Blacks had escaped censure for the actions and not only that, it was Umaga who carved them up in the second test.
As a final indignity – while Venter had failed to see the need to discipline Umaga or Mealamu for an act that was clearly visible, he somehow managed to find footage from the bottom of a ruck showing Lions lock Danny Grewcock biting Mealamu. Grewcock was suspended for two months – Mealamu played the rest of the series.
4. The Hand of God
Scotland and England had always been the best of enemies, but the animosity was more keenly felt by the Scots.
That was until they stunned England and the rugby world by defeating England to secure a Grand Slam in 1990. That was the day the rivalry intensified; the day the English team of that time, led by Will Carling, realised they had to feel the same hatred as the Scots – that they had to want to crush them the same way the Scots so wanted to crush them.
A culture of anything goes developed. Every time these two teams met it was intense and Scotland were on the verge of another famous win at Murrayfield in 1994. They had played superbly at times and were leading 14-12 with one minute remaining.
That was until Kiwi referee Lindsay McLachlan penalised the Scots for handling in a ruck and England fullback Jon Callard slotted the kick to win the game 15-14.
McLachlan had reacted to seeing a blue jersey handling the ball, but TV footage later showed the blue to quite clearly be the cuff of Rob Andrew’s England jersey. It was a terrible decision – one so bad that Scotland captain Gavin Hastings actually cried when he was interviewed after the game.
More than 10 years later, Carling was interviewed about that incident. “Was it Rob Andrew? Nah. Really? I can’t believe that,” he said with a giant grin. “But what I do know is that the Scots had been cheating throughout the game. Well, I certainly hope it was an England hand – because if it was Rob, then it was an even better day than I remember.”
3. The Gold Rolex
The French, hardly a nation that needs to be encouraged to feel they have been the victim of a miscarriage of justice, had an entirely legitimate sense of betrayal at the 1995 World Cup.
Their semi-final clash against the hosts, South Africa, was delayed because of torrential rain. The pitch at Kings Park was barely playable and because of the surface and the continual rain, the game was an arm wrestle.
It was a classic confrontation between the two packs and while the spectacle was low, the drama was high. It became especially high, when in the final minute after a prolonged French siege of the Springbok line, Abdel Benazzi appeared to score. If the try had been given, the French would have gone 20-19 ahead.
But Welsh referee Derek Bevan ruled Benazzi had come up short. It was a 50:50 call but took on a sinister hue at the end of the tournament.
At the closing dinner South African Rugby Union president Louis Luyt made an appalling speech where he said: “There were no true world champions in the 1987 and 1991 World Cups because South Africa were not there. We have proved our point.”
He then asked Bevan to come up to accept a gold watch for being “an outstanding referee”. Bevan joined the mass walkout. He later said: “It was something I could have done without. It came out of the blue: I have no idea why he singled me out. It could be misconstrued, and if that is the case, it leaves a bitter taste.”
2. Mysterious Suzie
If given their time again, the All Blacks would maybe have refused to have played in the 1995 World Cup final.
They would have asked for the game to be postponed. That way they would have been able to play the biggest game of their lives without the festering resentment that they had been the victims of foul play.
The All Blacks, after losing the final, claimed they had been poisoned some time before the game. The most popular theory was that something had been slipped into their tea ahead of a team meeting before the final – by the infamous and never identified waitress called Suzie.
Several of the squad were sick with Jeff Wilson seen vomiting at the side of Ellis Park when he was replaced during the game. Of the 36-man tour party, 31 were sick but the decision was made by team manger Colin Meads to keep that quiet.
“It was my call,” he said. “We had a meeting on the Friday morning in my room and I said, ‘We don’t tell anyone. Tell the players not to tell anyone back home.’ We didn’t want anyone to know we were crook. We didn’t want South Africa knowing that we were crook. And that is one that I regret. We should have let people know.”
The problem with not saying anything was that when details began to emerge after the All Blacks lost, it looked like sour grapes. It sounded lame, a weak excuse, yet all the All Blacks involved still insist there was something terribly wrong, and most suspect there had been sabotage.
1. The Cardiff Dive
No one knows how to hold a grudge like the Welsh. For more than 30 years they have carried the anger of losing to the All Blacks in 1978.
Maybe with good reason – they were cheated out of their victory.
Wales were a great team throughout the 1970s and they were leading the All Blacks 12-10 in Cardiff with only two minutes remaining.
Desperate to win to keep their dream of securing a Grand Slam alive, the All Blacks decided they had to do something inside or outside the law. Andy Haden, never one to hide from controversy, decided he was going to take control.
“With Wales in front by 12-10, I knew there could only be a minute or so left,” Haden revealed in 1998. “I went to Frank Oliver, my locking partner… and told him the plan in four words: ‘I’m going to dive.’ ”
And he did. He tumbled out of the lineout, making a song and dance as he did so, and the penalty was awarded. Brian McKechnie kicked it. That was it – the All Blacks had escaped with a 13-12 win and the whole of Wales knew they had been duped.
Everyone knew Haden had dived but English referee Roger Quittenton had fallen for it. It was a big error to have made which is probably why the Englishman to this day insists the penalty was not for the supposed infringement committed against Haden, but for a barge by Welsh prop Geoff Wheel.
“Haden’s perception is that his dive secured the penalty. That is a load of rubbish,” said Quittenton in response to Haden’s confession.
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