I don't buy the "NZ were ill" just like I don't buy the 1995 food poisoning bull*****
Jeez, I wish people, especially uninformed people like you obviously are, would just stop bringing this up when you know absolutely nothing about it
The All Blacks
were suffering from severe food poising in 1995, that is an indisputable, and proven fact. There were too many independent witnesses to their condition for this to be denied. In the 48 hours leading up to the final most of them were very, very, ill. The South African former head of security for Nelson Mandela, Rory Steyn, who was assigned as head of security for the NZ team, saw them in the hours leading up to the game. He described it as being
"like a battle zone", and with his previous experience in the South African Police he would not use such an expression lightly...
- extracts from Steyn's book "One Step Behind Mandela"
[TEXTAREA]
We raced back to the hotel and when I got up to the doctor's room it looked like a battle zone – like a scene from a war movie. Players were lying all over the place and the doctor and physio were walking around injecting them. I was a police officer, I worked with facts. What my eyes told me that night was that the team had deliberately been poisoned.[/TEXTAREA]
[textarea]I had to endure accusations of complicity in this, from New Zealand officials, and I was very angry that this was allowed to happen in my country – to people in my care. South African rugby fans remained skeptical of this theory and preferred to put it down to sour Kiwi grapes. To my fellow South Africans I want to say this: Stop all those cheap jokes about Suzie, the food poisoning and whingeing Kiwis. It happened. There is no doubt that the All Blacks were poisoned two days before the final.[/textarea]
The FACT that they were suffering from food poisoning is INDISPUTABLE. Whether or not they were intentionally poisoned, and if so who by, is up for conjecture. There is naturally no proof of this, and there never will be unless those involved spill the beans. However, I have a theory about what happened, based on a fair bit of research.
IMO, South Africans didn't know anything about it, and didn't have anything to do with what happened. I put it down to illegal Indian betting syndicates, who used a tasteless, odourless substance made from crushing the dried berries of a plant called "Indian Poke" (Phytolacca acinosa, which grows extensively, throughout Southern and Eastern Asia). It is known by the slang term "Indian Trick"; it mimics the symptoms of gastroenteritis, and eliminates from the body within 12 hours leaving no detectable trace, but leaving the victim with severe stomach pains, cramps, vomiting and diarrhoea for 24 to 48 hours after ingestion. This substance is well known on the sub-continent as being used for nobbling everything from cricket and hockey players to greyhounds and racehorses. There is some anecdotal evidence of "anomalous" betting trends in the period leading up to the final that would tend to support the theory.
Those who think that Indian Betting syndicates would not extend their influence to sporting events in South Africa, I have two words for you....... Hansie Cronje!
