Former All Blacks Coach Insists Team Was Poisoned Ahead of World Cup Showdown Against Springboks
Laurie Mains, the former All Blacks coach, has reiterated his long-held belief that members of his 1995 squad were deliberately poisoned in the build-up to the Rugby World Cup final against South Africa.
Mains says the suspicion has haunted him for years and prompted him to hire a private detective to investigate the events surrounding the team’s preparation for the showpiece match.
A final remembered for more than rugby
The 1995 final at Ellis Park — South Africa’s first tournament after apartheid and their debut World Cup — has gone down in history for its drama.
Mains, who stepped down as coach after the tournament, accepts it was “a great game,” but maintains that factors beyond form influenced the outcome.
“I’ve never stopped thinking about it,” he said on Dom Harvey’s podcast. “And it’s not that we lost. It was a great game. It’s not even how we lost.
The night before: sickness, suspicion and a missing waitress
Mains describes the week leading up to the final as the low point of his coaching career. He recalls returning to the team hotel after a managers’ dinner on the Thursday and immediately sensing trouble when he saw Zinzan Brooke at reception. Within minutes the camp learned many players were violently ill.
“We were all set to go for that final, and as was tradition, we’d leave the team to their devices on a Thursday, and the management would go out to a restaurant somewhere for dinner. Well, we did that, and when we came back into the hotel, standing at reception was Zinzan Brooke, and from the minute I saw him, I turned to Colin and said, ‘There are problems.’
“And he said, ‘Oh, half the team are up in the doc’s room vomiting and they’re sick as hell.’”
Mains says the sickness rendered the squad unable to train properly the next day. Management considered delaying the match but rejected the idea because of the disruption it would cause.
He says only three players avoided illness after having eaten elsewhere that evening — and that a fresh pot of tea and coffee later served in the hotel may have been the vehicle for whatever made the rest of the team sick.
“We normally went and had a little bit of a captain’s run on a Friday, We went out there, and I said to the boys, ‘Look, we’re not going to run, we’ll walk around the park and talk about what our options are from the various positions’ because we’re playing South Africa, we’d have specific tactics for them. After about a quarter of an hour, I just gave up because the players couldn’t concentrate, and I knew we were in real trouble.
Mains Admits 1995 World Cup Final Was Career’s Lowest Point
Mains admitted that watching his team go out knowing they couldn’t perform at full capacity was the worst moment of his coaching career.
“The worst moment in my coaching career was seeing that team go out and play, knowing that they probably couldn’t give better than 85% because of what they’d been through.
Bookies, a suspicious waitress and a private inquiry
Mains says a waitress who worked at the hotel for only a short period disappeared after the incident, and he suspects she may have been planted by outsiders with a financial motive. He believes bookies in the United Kingdom who favoured a South African win could have orchestrated the sabotage.
“There was no doubt that we were poisoned,” he said, recounting a conversation with Eion Edgar, a businessman who returned from the UK with alarming information.
Mains expressed his certainty that the initial batch of tea and coffee served to the team had been poisoned.
I’m convinced it was that first batch of tea and coffee that had been poisoned.”
Unresolved questions, lasting regret
Mains says the New Zealand Rugby Union opted not to pursue the matter formally, leaving him and his family to fund their own inquiry. Decades on, he argues the episode robbed his team of the best possible chance on the world stage and remains one of the most painful episodes of his career.
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