Former Wales captain, coach and team manager Clive Rowlands once declared: “The greatest thing a Welsh rugby man can do is play against the All Blacks.”
It used to be an epic rivalry, with Wales ahead 3-1 in the series after their win in 1953. But since then New Zealand have banked 32 consecutive victories.
Throughout that barren run there have been memorable incidents, some violent, others semi-comical, many hugely controversial.
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Ahead of the Test between the countries in Cardiff on Saturday, we take a look at the episodes that stand out, for good or bad.
1969: Messing with Meads
Wales hooker Jeff Young had been making a nuisance of himself in the opening Test in New Zealand, his misdemeanours including the odd tug on the shirt of home lock Colin Meads.
Young should have known he was entertaining no small degree of risk. Meads was, after all, once spoken of as “the kind of player you expect to see emerging from a ruck with the remains of a jockstrap between his teeth”.
Anyway, he punched Young and broke his jaw. Before the said blow was dished out, Meads had warned the Wales No. 2 to desist. "What did you say?" Young’s team-mates later asked him, the flanker John Taylor reported. "I said f--- off," said Jeff ruefully through his wired-up jaw. "The trouble was I didn't say it very loudly."
1978: Diving All Blacks
One of the biggest controversies of the lot. Wales were leading by two points and looking set for their first win over New Zealand in 25 years, only for the referee to award the All Blacks a last-minute penalty which Brian McKechnie kicked to secure his team a 13-12 win.
Referee Roger Quittenton had penalised Geoff Wheel for barging at a lineout. But at the same time New Zealand lock Andy Haden had cynically dived, with his lock partner Frank Oliver also theatrically exiting the said set-piece in a not dissimilar manner.
Haden later admitted his part in the infamous episode.
“No-one has more respect for the All Blacks than me but that was a disgrace, the closest thing I’ve seen to soccer on a rugby field,” Wales centre Steve Fenwick later said.
1978: JPR's 30 stitches in gruesome wound
Barely a month later, New Zealand took on Bridgend at the Brewery Field in a game blighted by Kiwi prop John Ashworth stamping on JPR Williams’ face at a ruck.
To add insult to an injury that required 30 stitches and left JPR looking like ‘Frankenstein’s monster’ when he improbably reappeared on the pitch in the same game, New Zealand named Ashworth as a substitute for their game with the Barbarians the following Saturday, a case of rubbing salt in a wound if there was one.
Williams said after the stamping incident. "I have no wish to play against them again.”
1988: 'You stamped on my head!'
David Bryant had come through the 1988 'tour of death' with his reputation enhanced. Wales had come up against a New Zealand side superior in almost every respect and ruthless with it.
More than two-and-a-half decades later, David Bryant spotted Sean Fitzpatrick in a cafe queue at Heathrow Airport. He couldn't resist approaching him.
"You probably don’t remember me but in 1988 you held my head on the floor and stamped on it',” said the former Bridgend flanker.
“He didn’t know me from Adam and said: ‘What was the fixture’?
"I said 'Wales'. He chuckled and replied, 'It was you and a few others'!"
The passing of time had dimmed the memories and the pain. He and Fitzpatrick reminisced about those distant days.
But the tour hurt at the time, with Bryant revealing in an interview with WalesOnline that it had taken a year and much antibiotic cream for his wounds to heal, such was the shoeing he had taken of those All Blacks.
1995: Poking the bear…
“We’re bigger than New Zealand, we’re faster and we’re more skilful.”
Ownership of those pearls of wisdom rests with Wales team manager at the 1995 World Cup, Geoff Evans. There was more.
"I had been sleeping in my room when Geoff came in to tell me with a laugh that he'd just kicked New Zealand off the training ground because their time was up," recalls an incredulous Hall.
"I just remember thinking: 'Oh no, what are we going to be in for out on the pitch.’"
Wales lost 34-9.
1995: Sledging with Fitzy
Not many people on Test debut against the All Blacks would have dared to respond to a sledge from Sean Fitzpatrick with one of their own.
But Jonathan Humphreys never was short of pluck.
Fitzy was a renowned hard case, a player who had once responded to a punch in the face by Ireland hooker Steve Smith not by hitting the deck in a crumpled heap but instead by calming removing his mouthguard, spitting out a couple of broken teeth and smiling.
Anyway, Humphreys came across him seconds before Wales faced New Zealand at the 1995 World Cup.
“As we ran out of the tunnel, he said to me: ‘You’re not ready for this, little boy.’ I’d read his autobiography before I’d gone out there and at one lineout, he was jabbering away as he had done all match and I said: ‘Mate, I’ve read your book and it was s**t.’
“As soon as I’ve said it, I’ve thought: ‘What have I done!’ I then got knocked out by Jamie Joseph’s swinging arm and don’t remember much after that.” You can read more about the Humph v Fitzy incident here.
2004: Wales' Aussie coach baits the Blacks
This piece of Kiwi baiting saw Scott Johnson, then on Wales’ coaching staff, inform the world: “We are not calling them the All Blacks this week. They are New Zealand. New Zealand is just a poxy little island in the South Pacific.”
A day or two later, Johnson was back, saying: “I was misquoted — it’s actually two islands. “
Wales, under Mike Ruddock and with flamboyant Australian Johnson in the backroom team, actually took the All Blacks to the wire, with Colin Charvis outstanding, before losing 26-25.
2006: The first Haka row - All Blacks vow to ‘destroy’ Wales
Confusion reigned in Cardiff. Where was the on-pitch haka?
The answer soon became apparent on the big screens in the Millennium Stadium.
Rather than agree to the Welsh Rugby Union’s plan for Wales to answer the haka with their own national anthem, the All Blacks did their ceremonial war-dance in-house, performing it before an audience of reserves and support staff in the dressing room.
When the match started, they expressed their anger in a display of venomous brilliance, running out 45-10 winners.
“Facing the All Blacks is difficult enough, let alone when they're hurting,” Wales prop Adam Jones was to later say.
“They put 40-odd points on us that day, and Nick Evans — who I have played with at Harlequins and was involved in that All Blacks squad — has since told me the incident ensured they wanted to destroy us.
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“As players we had wound them up without realising because the management and our Welsh Rugby Union wanted to mess around with the haka, which proved to be the wrong call.
“For some reason the powers that be decided that it would be a good idea to try and convince the All Blacks to do their haka before we responded with our national anthem.
“Usual tradition is to do the anthems first before they lay down their challenge. They obviously said no and subsequently decided to do the haka in their changing room, which was shown on the big screen at the Millennium Stadium before the anthems were sung."
2008: The second Haka row - eyeball to eyeball
Back at the then Millennium Stadium again, this time Wales chose to stare down the haka, not moving after the All Blacks had gone through their routine.
No one know when or how the standoff would end.
Camera bulbs flashed around the stadium, tension rose. Referee Jonathan Kaplan tried to encourage the players to return to their stations.
Eventually New Zealand did so. Wales had won the haka. Not so the game, though, with the Kiwis running out 29-9 victors.
READ MORE: The full story of that 2008 Haka stand-off is here
2012: Andrew Hore fells Bradley Davies
Hore’s wild swinging arm from behind put Davies on the road to hospital. The judicial officer later found the All Black had "not intended to make contact with the victim player's head".
An eight-week suspension was handed out, reduced to five weeks on the grounds of Hore’s ‘genuine remorse’ and the apology he had made to Davies as well as his previously clean record.
It didn’t impress everyone. “The finding that he did not mean to make contact with Davies' head is ludicrous,” former England hooker Brian Moore tweeted at the time.
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