It started as a gimmick, but Marty Holah reckons Waikato's champions T-shirts did their bit towards the national championship triumph.
The shirts came out of soccer's World Cup finals in Germany. The Germans put the year 1974 and 2006 on the front, in reference to the last time Germany hosted
the finals, which they won. This year, they came up short, being beaten in the semifinals, but it struck a chord with Waikato officials Glenn Ross and trainer Wally Rifle.
So shirts were made with 1992 and 2006, marking the year Waikato won the inaugural NPC final, and with fingers crossed for Saturday's final against Wellington.
"Wally thought it was a good idea to spread a bit of enthusiasm within the team," Holah said.
"To start, it was a bit of a novelty, but for the semifinal and final we wore it for the captain's run and it became a little bit of a belief thing.
"That was our goal and we really believed it was going to happen for us."
Holah had a big influence on proceedings in the final and concurred with coach Warren Gatland's assessment that Waikato were significantly fitter than Wellington.
"You could see guys hitting rucks and staying there," he said.
"It was quite noticeable, especially among the tight forwards, that they were really struggling to keep up with the pace of the game. And that makes chances for guys you normally wouldn't have with fresh legs."
Holah said Waikato had expected Wellington to milk injury breaks to slow the game and believes his team's errors in an up and down performance did their rivals a favour in taking some of the pace out of the game.
"We didn't quite back ourselves in the first half, which was a little bit annoying. We were going half-arsed instead of full speed. We spoke about it at halftime, but we seemed to do enough to get ahead and it was good enough in the end."
