Warning to Johnson's England as brilliant Boks sink All Blacks

The Springboks lost their battleship of a hooker yesterday as a sequel to sinking the All Blacks and stripping England of one of their more cherished records.

A disciplinary tribunal banned Bismarck du Plessis for three weeks after finding him guilty of gouging, a punishment which rules him out of Saturday's Tri-Nations Test against Australia in Perth and leaves a further hole amidships only days after losing John Smit for the rest of the tournament.

As their captain began his long recovery from a groin operation, his formidable understudy woke up yesterday morning after a famous win to find himself in the dock.

Martin Johnson hits out during a knock of 43 on Saturday

The dust had barely settled on a 30-28 victory won by Ricky Januarie's electrifying solo try five minutes from time than Du Plessis was answering a charge of gouging New Zealand flanker Adam Thomson.

In the great scheme of things it was a small price to pay for reminding the All Blacks that the Springboks are not champions of the world for nothing.

They also confirmed suspicions that an inadequate England team had given halfbaked New Zealand opponents delusions of grandeur in the two-Test series earlier this summer.

All of which gives England a rough idea of the magnitude of the task awaiting them when Bismarck and his crew turn up at Twickenham in November with all guns blazing.

The victory put an end to 30 straight home Test wins stretching back to a loss to an England team led by their new manager Martin Johnson.

England's six-pack, inspired by Johnson who was captaining his own cricket team against a Bunbury XI in a charity match at Rugby School on Saturday, had defied the odds in Wellington despite losing Neil Back and Lawrence Dallaglio to the sin-bin.

The Springboks managed their first win in New Zealand for 10 years under marginally less of a handicap with only one of their forwards, Victor Matfield, occupying the naughty chair after being sent there by Australian referee Matt Goddard in Dunedin.

Ricky Januarie is congratulated by team-mates after his superb winning try for the Springboks

Five points and one man down with time running out, the Kiwis were about to issue another proclamation about their global rule when the World Cup holders put them away in some style thanks to the smallest player on the field.

Januarie's dart through a pair of front row forwards, followed by an exquisite chip over full back Leon MacDonald, brought the little scrum half the solo try which enabled Francois Steyn's simple conversion to make all the difference.

In the minutes remaining, the All Blacks at least showed they had learned the excruciatingly painful lesson of their World Cup quarter-final defeat by France in Cardiff last autumn when they repeatedly spurned the drop-goal option.

Carter, who had earlier doubled his tally of drops from one to two, made two frenzied attempts to land another only to miss the first and have the second charged down.

Nobody felt more ecstatic than Smit watching from afar. 'I'd been very down since the first Test but the guys have brought a smile to my face,' he said.

'It takes something very special to beat the All Blacks in New Zealand. I am over the moon.'