Rugby: World Cup final lands on Halloween

Colin Slade, Malakai Fekitoa and Patrick Tuipulotu of the All Blacks celebrate winning The Rugby Championship. Photo / Getty Images.

The rugby soothsayers among you will have noted that the Rugby World Cup final is set for nine months from tomorrow. October 31, Halloween.

Hours after we have shooed away the last of those meddlesome trick or treaters, New Zealanders will be rising to watch the live telecast of the big one.

Touch wood, the All Blacks will be attempting to create history, by winning back to back Webb Ellis Cups.

The All Blacks do not often play on Halloween, less so in the professional age. If they were especially superstitious as players or as a team, they would prefer to avoid a match then.

You see, there is a spooky history attached to the All Blacks on this day. They don't play well on Halloween. Some of their most inglorious and famous defeats have fallen on October 31. They do not play at home on this day, never have, but long touring itineraries and the Rugby World Cup window have brought this inauspicious day into prominence.

Things kicked off in 1935 with the so-called Third All Blacks, as the UK press dubbed them. They accounted for Newport 17-5 on October 31, and the 1953 All Blacks were untroubled in defeating England's Southern Counties 24-0.

But in 1972 it turned pear-shaped for Ian Kirkpatrick's tourists, upended 9-3 by Llanelli, coached by the great Carwyn James, at Stradey Park. The Scarlets remain the last Welsh side to lower the All Blacks.

One of the most immortalised matches in rugby history took place on October 31, 1978. A dearth of TV footage means it has passed into lore via books, plays and the memories of the protagonists - the All Blacks and Munster - and the 120,000 who say they crammed into the 12,000 capacity Thomond Park, Limerick. It could have been any nondescript Tuesday in the Emerald Isle, except the home side tackled like demons and won a 12-0 victory. Captain Graham Mourie, it may have been, who quipped that they were lucky to get nil.

Painful it may be to relate, but the All Blacks' most extraordinary loss of the professional era came at Twickenham in 1999, RWC semifinal, an astonishing 43-31 reverse to France in which the victors uncorked 30 minutes of the most nerve-jangling, spine-tingling rugby ever conceived.

Spookily, one can throw in two other bad and memorable (aren't they all?) losses, if we were to stretch the point. On October 30, 1963, the All Blacks fell 3-0 to the 'might' of Newport in Wales. The match, of course, took place in the early Halloween hours in New Zealand.

You had forgotten about October 30, 1990 (October 31, NZT), hadn't you? For then the All Blacks, captained by Mike Brewer, went down 18-12 to a motley south-west French collection known as Cote Basque-Landes in Bayonne, sunk by the boot of Dax's Thierry Lacroix. The All Blacks who played that day will not have forgotten.

Clear, rational thinking men will dismiss the All Blacks' Halloween Curse. But beware, rugby is a funny old game... I'll get back to you in nine months.

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