Rugby World Cup 1995 I Jonah Lomu — the All Blacks wrecking ball that changed the face of rugby

The enduring image of the 1995 Rugby World Cup is of Nelson Mandela, dressed in Francois Pienaar’s No 6 jersey, awarding the Webb Ellis Cup to the Springbok captain, but also etched into immortality is the scene of utter destruction when Jonah Lomu scored against England in the semi-final.

Lomu scored four that day, but the one the world will never forget was when he ran over Mike Catt, rendering the fullback a mangle of spread-eagled arms and legs, while behind them, bulldozed into the Newlands turf, were fellow casualties, Will Carling and Tony Underwood.

No wonder Carling called the juggernaut “a freak”. Freakish the 20-year-old was. The rugby world had never seen the like of him before, and there hasn’t been anyone quite like him since.

At a towering 196cm (6 ft 5 in) and weighing 125 kilograms, he was bigger than the locks at that World Cup, but here he was on the left wing. With that muscular bulk and the pace of a sprinter (he was a hurdles record holder at school in South Auckland), he was a runaway train.

Coaches across the World Cup wondered how to stop him. If he was presented with an outside gap, he had the pace to show a clean pair of heels. Go low and he ran over you. Go high and he went over you anyway. He was like Gulliver swatting off Lilliputians.

As Carling added, “I've seen men bigger than Lomu, I've seen men faster than Lomu, I've seen men stronger than Lomu, but I've never seen a man bigger, faster and stronger than Jonah.”

Lomu, the son of immigrant Tongans, was the perfect attacking storm and rugby’s first superstar. Soon, there would be a wax model of him in London’s Madame Tussauds museum. In New Zealand, fast food giant McDonald's renamed their biggest offering the Jonah Burger.

He had debuted for the All Blacks a year earlier, in 1994, when playing two Tests against France. He was the youngest ever All Black at 19 years and 45 days.

A hard-to-believe fact is that Lomu, who had seen little ball in the games against France, almost did not go to South Africa. Unconvinced All Blacks coach Laurie Mains has said Lomu was one of his last selection choices for the 1995 World Cup.

On the fast, dry pitches of South Africa, the Lomu phenomenon exploded. His seven tries for a tournament is a World Cup record shared with Springbok left wing Bryan Habana (2007 World Cup). The two share the record for most tries in World Cups (15).

Lomu scored his 15 in 11 World Cup games (across two World Cups) while Habana’s tally was spread across three World Cups.

But it was not just the number of tries Lomu scored, it was how he scored them. With his head shaved but for a small quiff on his forehead, thunderous thighs, and a ferocious glare, he scorched through defences like a blazing comet.

For the game of rugby, the Lomu explosion in 1995 could not have been better timed because that World Cup was the farewell to the amateur game.

As the dust was settling on the Springboks’ win, leading players across the world were secretly discussing how they could force the International Rugby Board to embrace professionalism. They got it right.

Lomu gave professional rugby an instant face. He was a marketing guru’s dream come true. It was around him that the professional game was launched. There was no need for a publicity campaign as to why rugby players deserved to be paid. Lomu had done it all by himself.

As the website allblacks.com put it, “For the seven years of his career, he was a lightning rod for rugby's advance into the uncharted waters of a money game that had to be shared, finally, by players who had seen the monetary rewards for their labours go into the bank accounts of those controlling rugby unions, which held those finances in iron fists.”

Sadly, Lomu was stricken with a kidney illness early in his career and forced into retirement early.

He played his final Test, his 63rd, having scored 37 tries, in 2002. He played his last first-class game in 2006, ending a career in which he scored 126 tries, shared in a World Cup Sevens title, and won a gold medal in Sevens at the 1998 Commonwealth Games.

In 2015, one of rugby’s most poignant off-field moments occurred when the ill Lomu visited wheelchair-bound Joost van der Westhuizen at the latter’s home.

The pair had been fierce rivals on the field — one of the great moments of the ’95 final was when Lomu got the ball in space but was tackled around his ankles by the determined Van der Westhuizen. That tackle gave the Boks the belief that they could stop Lomu.

Intriguingly, Lomu never scored a try against the Springboks in his career.

Lomu, fighting back tears, said to Joost, who was suffering from Motor Neuron Disease, “You know what… the most satisfying thing is that I can call you my friend.”

Such is the power of rugby to forge comradeships. Truly special.

Later that year, Lomu died suddenly when the kidney a friend had given him was rejected by his body. He was 40. Van der Westhuizen died in 2017 at age 45.

Lomu, rugby’s first global superstar, is to the sport what Muhammad Ali was to boxing, Michael Jordan to basketball, Tiger Woods to golf, and Usain Bolt to sprinting.

He was that good.

Mike Greenaway is the author of the best-selling books The Fireside Springbok and Bok to Bok.