Jonah. Don’t Go
By: Peter Malcouronne
Tags: Jonah Lomu, Sports, Rugby

Now let’s step back a moment and remember that professional rugby today, for better and worse, would not be where it is without Jonah. It was his heroics on the high veldt in ‘95 — the four tries against England, the Catt-trampling, the ‘oh oh ohs’ of Keith Quinn — that got the attention of the moneymen. Rugby was always going to go pro, but one man made Murdoch double the pot.

Yet there was always an ambivalent attitude towards him back home. I saw him do stupendous things for the Wesley College 1st XV, once carrying an entire forward pack on his back for 50 metres before falling, but there were always sideline snipers lambasting him as a lazy, dumb coconut — all brawn, no brains. ‘Wait ‘til he starts playing men,’ they’d snarl. ‘Then he’ll be found out.’

When the nephrotic syndrome first diagnosed in 1996 sapped his strength, stole his stamina, the same snide, racist remarks would be made. But Jonah never complained. In an age where we make excuses for our weaknesses, he played down the true, debilitating nature of his.

If Jonah’s illness stopped him from being the greatest player of all time, he’d dominate any highlights reel. And for two glorious months — at the ’95 and ’99 World Cups — he was as fine a rugby player as has ever been. He was the best in the world at two World Cups: no rugby player and perhaps only Pele can say that. Small wonder a boy faxed the All Blacks before the English semi in ’95 with expert advice. “Remember rugby is a team game,” he wrote. “All 14 of you pass it to Jonah.”

The test against Italy at Waikato Stadium was the first of the All Blacks’ 2002 season. Jonah, coming off the bench, scored a try in the closing minutes. This would his last season for the All Blacks. Photo: Adrian Malloch.

I saw him play live for the All Blacks just once. It was the trial side that John Mitchell took to Europe at the end of 2002, leaving behind 21 of our top guns including most of the forward pack. Mitchell said a lacklustre Lomu was selected solely on reputation. But at Twickenham, the stadium the Brits simply call HQ, Jonah exploded.

Exploded? Jonah was so ridiculously good that he made writers ordinary. When he ran it was hard to look past ‘rampaging’ or ‘bulldozing’ or ‘stampeding’. Ever since I’d seen him play at Wesley College, I’d tried to understand how he did it. I’d tried to crack his secret. I wanted to work out was he so hard to stop.

Though he was usually the biggest player on the field — and very often the quickest — that wasn’t the answer. The power came from somewhere else: somehow he seemed to gain momentum from contact. It seemed contrary to the usual laws of physics but watch Jonah in slow-mo and you’ll understand. You’ll see him shove tacklers away, push off them, and take their power for his own. You’ll see the way he crunches into players but seems to ping off, pinballishly, and slam even harder into the next hapless fool.

I’d also vainly tried to describe what Jonah looked like at full gallop. There was some rhino there, some buffalo, even some elephant. But that stutter step when he got the ball, the lurch left and then the thunder into stride — that was Phar Lap, that was Bonecrusher, that was Empire Rose. Yet the power and menace — there was something leonine, tigerish about that.

But then I realised I was looking in the wrong place. Jonah played rugby like he was in a video game.

Like in the movies. There’s a moment in that last English test that’s so Boys-Own I wonder if I dreamed it. This is what I think happened. The English are grinding us into the ground — we’re imprisoned inside our 22. Somehow the ball bobbles out to Jonah who cuffs a tackler aside like a brat and then, from a standing start, leaps left, bolts, his stride lengthening, his marker fading. Everyone is on their feet, just as they are whenever Jonah touches the ball — the guy beside me, a tweeded, ruddy-cheeked chum from Surrey is standing on his chair. “No Jonah. No Jonah” he mutterers, then “Go Jonah!”

He barges one defender aside, then another until he’s ridden down after a 50-metre bust. But he’d still score twice that day. Asked later how they’d stop Jonah next time, English defensive coach Phil Larder deadpanned, “I’d probably work with the SAS and have somebody with an elephant gun in the stand.”

Of course, in the end, all it’d take was a pair of failing kidneys and a dialysis machine.

Heroes aren’t meant to die like this. But is this now the end? Really? I can’t let it be. Jonah says he’ll play on because he loves the game, but for who? North Harbour B? The nascent Wesley RFC, the club starting up at his old alma mater? Or might he cross the ditch and sign for John Mitchell’s Western Force or even the Gold Coast Titans, the new NRL side.

Perhaps he’ll become a roving rugby Ambassador, inculcating the world with All Black propaganda. He’d be great at that. After all he was, he is, the most famous rugby player in the world. But a small part of me still thinks he’s going to make it back in Black. I can’t give up on his dream. I don’t want let him go.

One day I’ll have to. It hurts. The last game I watched live with my late father was the ‘Game of the Century’, the 39–35 win over the Wallabies at Stadium Australia in front of record 110,000 crowd. Jonah scored the winning try in injury time. That’s a pretty good memory. And one day I’ll be able to tell my son that I saw Jonah, the Muhammad Ali of rugby, score his last tries for the All Blacks.

Jonah’s last journey through a phalanx of haka— past his old Wesley College brothers, past his All Blacks and Blues team-mates, before a standful of little Wesleyans.