Rugby players' food may have been spiked

Fresh claims that the New Zealand rugby team was poisoned before its defeat in the World Cup final against South Africa last year have surfaced following investigations by the team doctor and a private detective.

Mike Bowen, the doctor who cared for most of the team when they suffered food poisoning on the day before the final, has told a shocked New Zealand public that he has identified an African herb which he believes was used deliberately to spike tea and coffee.

Rumours of the poisoning have been circulating since New Zealand lost 15-12 in front of a triumphant President Nelson Mandela, but team members have been reluctant to discuss them because they felt they would be accused of sour grapes.

However, in claims coinciding with the launch of his autobiography, Laurie Mains, the team coach, says an internal South African inquiry and a private detective he hired himself found that the team's drinks were spiked with a herb known locally as "Indian trick". The herb is odourless and tasteless but is reputed to induce symptoms similar to severe food poisoning.

"I've always thought it was likely [that the team was poisoned]," Dr Bowen said. "But I never had any evidence that anything was spiked." He said he had since heard that Indian trick would have produced the symptoms suffered by the team.

Mr Mains said his private investigator had established that a South African waitress known only as "Susie" had been paid to slip Indian trick into the team's tea and coffee on the eve of the final. He did not say, however, how he could be sure or who had paid the waitress.

"I just knew this was no case of ordinary old food poisoning," he said. "We were very, very sick, all but about four or five members of the whole touring party."

The sporting world remains sceptical about the claims, particularly since they coincide with the launch of Mr Mains' autobiography. A fresh controversy is usually regarded as vital to the sales of sports books.

Some believe the fact that no official inquiry has ever been conducted by the New Zealand rugby authorities speaks volumes about how they view the claims. The new allegations were certainly not being taken seriously by the South Africans.

"It is ridiculous that they should be saying this," Beston Banda, first secretary of the South African Embassy's political section in London, said. "They stayed at a hotel, so their food and drinks were supplied at a neutral location. We denied the claims when they first began circulating, I have never heard of anything called Indian trick and, as far as we are concerned, we won the game fair and square."