This Sporting Life: Jonah Lomu

I love rugby. Everyone knows that New Zealanders love their rugby too, so why should I be different. I liked soccer when I was in Holland and baseball when I was in America. That's just the way I am. The All Blacks may possibly be the most the single most popular entity in New Zealand ever. They have the the highest winning percentage of any professional team ever at 74.49%. The other 25.51% of losses have mostly come at semi-finals of World Cups. To be honest though, I never knew that much about rugby before I came here. The one player I did know was Jonah Lomu. If there ever was a world rugby star then it was Jonah. In all rugby playing nations he was revered execpt for possibly New Zealand. It's quite hard to try and explain the relationship between New Zealand and Jonah. It's not necassarly "tall poppy syndrome" that is quite prevalent here but more of people here not knowing how to or where to place him. This is probably because he was such a unique player. Big, strong and fast, there hadn't really been anyone like him before. Wingers in rugby were lean, light and quick. One on one against an opposing winger was almost unfair for Jonah. Unfortunately, rugby isn't played one on one but 15 against 15. Given space to roam or bringing the ball into contact against smaller players is really where he came into his own. To an unendearing New Zealand public he always had fatal flaws. He couldn't play defence or wasn't any good under the high ball, are the most common ones. The funny thing was, in England,France,Ireland,Scotland and Wales he was almost godlike. It's a well known fact that he turned down multiple offers from the UK and France to go and play for clubs there (something a lot of other All Blacks have done) but he is hardly ever credited with staying. Of course, with New Zealand's rich rugby history they have always had great players and I really feel that if they ever made an alltime XV Jonah would somehow miss the cut. Players like John Kirwan or Jeff Wilson (great players by the way) would probably get the nod on the wing and that might be fair enough. I'm really just trying to say that while I often hate sometimes how sport is commercialized and sold, in this case no one has been more important at selling the All Blacks "brand" than Jonah Lomu. Jonah did things the "right way" just like a lot of the other greats. He played hard, no one doubted his commitment to the All Blacks, he was humble and fronted up to criticism. He spent a lot of time promoting the game worldwide and has never gotten himself into any real strife. It only came out in his later career that he was suffering from a debilitating kidney disease that would eventually see him require a kidney transplant. Yet somehow, he's never gotten himself into the pantheon of great players and I wonder why. All I know, is that before I knew rugby I knew Jonah Lomu.
I got a few clips off of youtube that cannot be missed. Most people in New Zealand will have seen them a million times but it has to be done. Just like Van Basten's goal against Russia or Fisk's homer in game six these are the ones you remember.
1. The Classic - Has anyone's career been more defined by one play than Jonah's or Mike Catt's than this. I threw in French commentary to spice it up.

2. The Favourite - I love this one because when I first saw it it I was right in the middle of trying to explain the rules of rugby to one of my dutch friends. Basically, I was trying to say how in rugby you need to stay with your support players because in rugby if your isolated you could lose the ball at the play the ball area. Then this happened. I just said, "Unless your Jonah, of course."

3. The Commercial - I always loved this commercial. I love the van hit at the end. I don't know who came up with the idea of this commercial but I always thought it was very original.

By the way, for those of my readers who don't know the All Blacks or rugby at all let me just say that this is one of the coolest things in sport because even if you don't like sports you'll feel something watching this. And here's why they do it.