“From the quarterfinal through the first two weeks after that, it was pretty hectic,” he said.

“I was getting messages via Facebook and on my e-mails like ‘watch your back when you get here because I’m going to take you out. I can’t wait for you get here so I can spit on you’ [said messages from South Africa].

“I wasn’t too worried about people telling me they couldn’t wait until I got to South Africa so they could spit on me.”

Lawrence said the hardest part was the realisation he could have done better, including spending time with Paddy O’Brien dissecting the quarterfinal performance.

“The criticism didn’t hurt me that much because I know I didn’t referee as well as I should have,” Lawrence said.

“I took a plan of not being overly technical into that game and possibly that was not the right plan.

“To get to my biggest game and not referee anywhere near as well, I let myself down and I also let the team down.”

He said that what hurt him were accusations that his actions had been deliberate and underhand to benefit the World Cup hosts.

“It only really hurt when it became personal, when people started saying it was a fix-up and I’d done it so the All Blacks could get through. That hurt,” he said.

“I’d done my self-review and realised I’d missed a couple of things, but you can’t get overly concerned about that because I had just missed them – it wasn’t as if I’d seen them and decided not to do anything.”

Does not hurt anyone, it’s just become a joke and the NZ public (in general) are so precious about it, it is quite pathetic.

But hey if a bunch og grown men want to pull faces and look like complete tossers, well hey thats their right I guess?

And can someone give me the actual meaning of the words? Or are they really meant to mean googldygook?

would you like all the teams to be boring and do the same old thing all the time? kiwi’s are precious about the haka, but then so is the world towards it. why does a simple tradition get so much attention? what’s the harm? it’s only a dance yet people go on and on about it.

the throat slitting gesture I can understand is misinterpreted (supposed to be the drawing in a breath of life) and the players that perform it tend to use it as a throat slitting (nonu in the finals) but so what’s the big deal? It’s a simple little ritual that AB’s have been doing for over a hundred years.

Does it really impact on the game? Who does it hurt?

aaaahhhhhh poor little Hurricane………..you offended and nose outa joint? Do a face pulling dance, you may feel better On second thoughts, rather not!

Dude, if you don’t think the haka is overdone then you on P like the rest of ya mates

The Haka has run it’s course, there is no place in moden rugby for a heathen dance and throat slitting. And you have a crack at SA for being 3rd world. Cry me a river!

For the umteenth time, I dig the country and most of it’s inhabitants, just not the few one eyed twats that think their sh it does not smell and does not come out in little marble shaped black pellets

And I must have missed the bit about Watson taking Brycie Wycie to court?

One other thing, the Boks never lost due to Brycie, they lost because they could not turn possesion into points……….simple

Finaly, did you have your head in the sand after 2007? Did you not witness the angst in NZ, the endless anti Henry letters to the press, the inquiry into “where it all went wrong” and all the anti Barnes talk in the papers and on the blogs.

Please don’t tell me you are one eyed as well?

1 point is a win, dont you think?
I mean you took the Wales game in the RWC as a win didnt you? The ref gave you that game.

@whatever(whatever)-387:
Yeah, it was full on as you know cos YOU live here.
So really if you dont like being in a country while its hosting the RWC, you should leave and comeback when its over and done with or NZ should just apologise to you Whatever, how dare we.
Must have been torture for you. Just imagine the poor people wishing they could have been a part of the experience in NZ , you know real rugby fans. And here you walking down Queens street muttering under your breath about the damn haka.

“we did not spend millions on a commission of enquiry like NZ did after 2007″ um we didnt spend millions and how is your reaction to bryceGate any better than ours was in 2007? isnt andreWatson(irony) also trying to get in on the bloodletting by taking bryce to court? have you not read saffa’s reaction to bryce? yeah y’all handling it much better than we did 2007. Barnes came and reffed in NZ in 2008 and all NZ did was refuse to acknowledge him. he never felt threatened. we try to win our games on the field thanx.

cheap shot at the haka, but it is only a dance so get over it.not sure why the world makes such a big deal over it. i’m sure the only culture u know of is in yoghurt or in your undies

beeeaaautiful

Wow, how proud

Get your facts straight doos for brains. It was AJ Venter who gave the guy a smack

At least the fat dude did not try sexually molest a runner on the side of the road, like the drunken role model All Black

Idiot

yeah kiwi’s are cowards. thats why we come over to southAfrica and win 3Nations. all of NZ are cowards. thats why we went through the WC undefeated. didnt realise that winning was cowardly.

boks didnt deserve to win. boks were a team of old men and a figure head coach. boks got biased refereeing through out the tournament but all you bleat on about is bryce. you guys had heaps of ref’s call fall your way in the wales and samoa games but convienently all you remember is what suits.

the truth will set u free. 4 more years

This farken Brycecunt:

- Not only screws the Boks in the QF by doing nothing less than fixing the match…
- He also implicitly screws the reputation of the Country SA and all Bok fans by implication, not by logic, but by his emotions and fears borne of a now obvious guilty conscience…

Brycecunt “fears for his safety” – so this is the bravery of a Kiwi…? Farken Coward, like many of his snivelling countrymen who now occupy this Rugby site. They all display similar snivelling, snorting, blinkered cowardly characteristics.

Fark this fool!

What’s wrong with eating biltong…?

Rugby is important to Kiwis as it is to you, otherwise you would still not be bleating on about it
2 months on.

I don’t blame Lawrence for been worries, remember that big fat Bok supporter that ran on the field to attack the ref as the “ref was cheating” in his words.
Luck Richie was there to knock his fat biltong eating *** out.

Pfffffffff….

In any case – he has ruined dozens of games over the past 2 years, don’t pick up one example and use it as a rule. He destroyed the QF (Tahs, Blues) with atrocious refereeing to favour the Blues. A couple of weeks earlier he made one of the most ridiculous rulings in history at scrum time. He has blown the way of his home teams in every game i’ve seen in 2010 and 2011 and now he has continued that form into internationals where everyone gets to see what we have been dealing with. The bloke is a joke, whether deliberate or not. You will also I see I didn’t say it was a conspiracy. I clearly stated “who knows”.

With regard to your issue with my statement that there are domestic violence increases in NZ that mirror All Black results –
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/all-blacks/news/article.cfm?c_id=116&objectid=10468736
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/rugby-world-cup/4190359/Police-fear-violence-if-All-Blacks-fail-at-cup
These are from your own publications.

With regard to what I mean…I think it was obvious. I’m saying just that…It would be a massive shame if things were like they are in New Zealand where domestic violent spikes just because the Rugby team loses. Where Rugby is taken so seriously that opposition fans at an international event are subjected to constant abuse and threats, and where productivity falls and depression increases based on Rugby results. And I feel that the continuation of this Bryce hatred is the sort of thing included in this statement.