All Blacks: The day it all came to grief

Craig Dowd in the dressing room. Photo / Getty Images

Almost exactly 10 years ago, the gods of world rugby were reduced to a team of lost souls in 25 minutes at Twickenham, writes Gregor Paul

There was disbelief in the Twickenham car park.

Sean Fitzpatrick, in the midst of a post-match picnic, already reeling from seeing the All Blacks dumped out of the 1999 World Cup, was almost floored when his former team-mate Josh Kronfeld emerged from the changing rooms to detail the filthy work of the French.

That the French were eye-gouging and 'bag-snatching' was no surprise to Fitzpatrick. What he was shocked by was the All Blacks' inability to do something about it.

The All Blacks had never stood back in almost 100 years of action. But on October 31, 1999 they were shot like fish in a barrel.

There was a ghoulish fascination watching the cloak of invincibility being ripped to shreds.

The world's greatest team; a side whose aura had been built on their proficiency, professionalism, innovation and ruthlessness transformed, in the space of 25 minutes, into lost souls.

The All Blacks were a ghost ship in the second half and, even as the 10th anniversary of the infamous semifinal looms into view, the All Blacks involved can't explain what happened that day.

They were destroyed by the most astonishing 25-minute blitz that saw France score 33 points.

To the neutrals, it was the greatest World Cup game ever played. The shock of the century.

France - the wooden-spooners in the 1999 Five Nations - were lucky to be anywhere near the semifinal.

They made it thanks to Kiwi referee Paddy O'Brien's self-confessed "train-crash" game in the pool rounds where he blindly whistled Fiji out of a deserved victory.

The bookies had the French at odds of 15/2 - which in a two-horse race was saying they were a bet only for the criminally insane.

When the All Blacks extended their 17-10 half-time lead to 24-10 through a Jonah Lomu special on 48 minutes, the All Blacks had one foot in the final.

"I was doing the radio commentary for that game," recalls squad member Ian Jones, "at 24-10 I was speaking with a lot of enthusiasm and all the radio guys around us were pretty confident.

"I was dumbstruck in those final 30 minutes. I didn't say anything. It was so sudden. We lost control of the game in those 25 minutes."

Those 25 minutes had a bigger impact than just knocking the All Blacks out of the World Cup. The whole perception of the All Blacks as rugby gods, as somehow superior, was shattered by the Christophe's - Lamaison and Dominici - and Olivier Magne. Those three ran amok, scoring at will.

That was shocking enough. But it was the fact that France had the ball, almost exclusively for most of the second half, that was sending students across New Zealand to grief counsellors.

There didn't need to be any snazzy analysis system set-up to determine that the French were intimidating the All Blacks - using all their Gallic charm at the bottom of most rucks.

"There was a lot of that stuff going on," says Craig Dowd. "I can remember being at the bottom of a ruck with my arms pinned down and a finger being poked in my eye. But you have to deal with that in a test. You have to absorb it.

"But that had no bearing on why we lost. If you wanted to blame something then I would blame the shape of the rugby ball. It bounced their way every time. There was a point, just after they scored their second try, when I realised we were in serious trouble and I felt like the ball was never going to bounce our way again."

It didn't bounce their way again until France were leading 43-24 with seven minutes left. Jeff Wilson's try to close the gap to 43-31 was not any form of consolation.

While there's no doubting Dowd's assertion about the way the ball bounced, others, like Fitzpatrick, were wondering whether France were able to make too much of their own luck.

At one point a microphone picked up captain Taine Randell complaining to the referee that his testicles were being squeezed. The old brigade couldn't quite believe that; in their day no one looked to the ref to fix that sort of nonsense.

Would France have had so much possession, free rein of Twickenham, had there been some effective retaliation; a line drawn that made it clear retribution would be swift?

The lack of enforcement is the shooter on the grassy knoll theory whereas Jones sees kick receipts as the Lee Harvey Oswald.

"I remember when we analysed that game it was clear that we had failed at kick-off receipts," says Jones. "Everything they were doing was working and the way to suffocate them was to hold on to the ball. But we didn't do that.

"In those last five minutes I knew we had lost and I kept wondering how we had let things slip."

A WHOLE NATION wondered the same thing. At 24-10 the All Blacks were cruising. By the end of the game, coach John Hart was the most hated man in New Zealand and he was out of a job five days later.

The lack of leadership, the indecision, the failure to subdue the French - these were all, as it turned out, to be recurring themes at World Cups.

Where the heat really came on Hart was around his selection and preparation for that test. Christian Cullen, head and shoulders the best fullback in the world at that time, was used at centre. Jeff Wilson, a more natural wing, was at fullback and Tana Umaga, struggling for form was retained on the wing when everything about him screamed centre.

Justin Marshall was famously not selected, with a young Byron Kelleher preferred.

"I can remember there was quite a bit of surprise among the players with that selection," recalls Daryl Gibson, the midfielder who came off the bench in the final quarter. "I can't actually remember the reason coach John Hart gave for picking Byron Kelleher.

"But I do remember there was a feeling within the team that Mehrtens and Marshall were an established and important combination."

It was the selection of Cullen that was hardest to fathom - as if the backs jerseys had been thrown randomly and what you got is what you played.

But Cullen doesn't believe it was such a big deal. "I would have preferred to have played fullback," he says. "But I don't think it was a factor. It was just those 20 minutes ...

"Centre is a different position in terms of the demands and I had a few games there before that semifinal. With hindsight maybe I could have had a few more, but I wasn't worried about it coming into that game and we were 24-10 up when I was playing centre."

There was no post-match debrief with Hart about Cullen's future in terms of what position he would play. His return to fullback was not made with any discussion.

"In the second half of the third/fourth play-off match Jeff Wilson asked me if I wanted to go back and play fullback. So I did, and that was it really."

It's Dowd who hits on the most critical aspect of the preparation that was flawed.

He doesn't believe going to the South of France for a few days was the wrong call.

"It wouldn't have made any difference where we were," he says. "Once we were there, we still went out to the carpark and practised lineouts and worked just as hard.

"If we had our time again I would say we shouldn't have watched the other semifinal [Australia beat South Africa]. We fell into the trap of having one eye on how we could go about beating Australia, what we would do against them, who their key players were and all that sort of stuff.

"There was a certain element of confidence within the squad before that game."

That confidence was shattered in London. The changing room was a morgue. And yet, however much pain the players felt then, they had no idea what was waiting back home.

The nation was angry. Marshall picked up his luggage in Christchurch and found the Auckland baggage handlers had scrawled 'loser' over it.

They were heroes when they left five weeks earlier in a hail of hubristic marketing. They returned home to find criminals, politicians and even real estate agents were held in higher regard.

Ten years on and the 1999 semifinal has gained in importance but, paradoxically, is less a beacon of despair.

That game was the first time systemic failings in the professional development process came to light. It was the first time that the leadership of the side crumbled under pressure, as it would in the next two World Cups.

There is now a portfolio of World Cup failure in which 1999 can be placed and it doesn't seem quite so horrific - it's significant more for its chronology than the events of the day.

But it still hurts those who were involved. They still wish it hadn't been so.

"At least in 1995 we performed," says Jones, "we gave it all we had. The pain was intense, no question.

"I guess I was quite lucky that I didn't come home. I started my contract with Gloucester and didn't come back until 2003."

And by 2003 there was a whole new World Cup drama.