All Set For The Best World Cup

This month heralds the Rugby World Cup in Japan. Paul Thomas talked to former All Blacks legend and Windsor and Holyport stalwart Zinzan Brooke about his famous drop goal, playing at the highest international level and which Home Nation might be in with a chance of lifting the trophy

- Paul Thomas

Possession may be nine-tenths of the law, but in rugby, it’s points that count, or is that pints?

For one ex-rugby international with one of the best pedigrees in world sport, three points from his right boot will be remembered for a very long time.

Zinzan Brooke, the former New Zealand Number 8 – whom ex-England Captain Will Carling listed in The Telegraph in 2007 as the eighth-best player the world has ever seen – has a beer named after him in honor of the finest drop goal in World Cup history. Called Zinzan’s drop, it’s made by Windsor & Eton Brewery.

But it is that famous 47-meter drop goal against England in the World Cup semi-final in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1995 that ranks as one of the tastiest moments in match play.

Of course, the South Africans would eventually upstage Zinzan’s tour de force by winning the final on home soil. Even in the semi, it was four tries by Jonah Lomu that did the damage, demolishing England to put New Zealand through to meet the Rainbow Nation hosts. But it was Zinzan who stole the headlines with his dramatic drop goal, which still has more than 20,000 hits on YouTube.

More than two decades later, memories of that moment are still strong, and why wouldn’t they be?