For 20 minutes at Murrayfield last weekend, little was going right for Damian McKenzie.
The 30-year-old, 5ft 8in, 12 stone, fair hair, fresh face, looks a little out of place among the flying breeze blocks elsewhere on the pitch.
Initially, after coming off the bench in the 44th minute against Scotland, he felt it too.
“Kyle Steyn had just scored for them when I came on,” he said.
“We kicked off, they put up a box kick from nine, I went up to catch it and wasn’t able to. I knocked my head as well.
“Blood started pouring out. We were most of the time on defence. We got a scrum, I kicked it out, but didn’t make too many metres.
“Then I missed a tackle on Darcy Graham, luckily Cam Roigard saved the try in the corner, but I cut my chin. That started bleeding and I thought, ‘here we go, it’s going to be a long last 15 minutes’.”
It was a crucial 15 minutes as well.
At that point, the score was 17-17. The All Blacks were a man down via Wallace Sititi’s yellow card. Scotland were sniffing history.
In 120 years of trying, a first win over New Zealand was a single point and a quarter of an hour away.
