Jonah reveals: Where it went wrong

<i>Jonah: My Story</i> has been updated to include Jonah's new comments.

In an excerpt from his updated book Jonah: My Story, All Black great Jonah Lomu explains why he's breaking his silence on the fallout with former manager Phil Kingsley Jones and why he'll never speak to him again.

One of the questions most frequently asked of me is how the relationship between me and Phil Kingsley Jones went so bad. For years I skirted around the question. For years I kept the hurt to myself and told just a few of the people closest to me what really happened. That's until Phil decided to publish his own book in 2011. Even in this original book, published back in 2004 at the time of the split, I had told the publishers that I did not want to change anything about what I had written about Phil and my relationship. As I said back then: "Why change what I have written? For 14 or 15 years this was the way it was between Phil and me. Nothing can change that." For the most part we had a great ride.

Well, things have changed now and I'm no longer prepared to hold my silence. I haven't read Phil's book and I have no intention of doing so, but I have been shown a chapter in the book called "Bust-up", which is Phil's take on how our relationship ended. The chapter concerns an article that appeared in the New Zealand Woman's Weekly shortly after Fiona and I set up house together in 2003. Phil's got it right in this chapter in as much as he believes the Woman's Weekly article is the reason for the breakdown in our relationship. It's just that Phil has got his facts slightly wrong. In fact, his version of events differs greatly from my own.

The background to the

Woman's Weekly

article is a bit complicated. My relationship with Teina had come to an end around the end of 2002 and Fiona and I had begun to see each other. In fact, we had decided to move into a house together in Ponsonby. Neither of us was quite ready to share this news with the public, but as had happened so many times before in my private life, the media managed to get hold of the news and we were "papped" together at a barbecue.

Jonah Lomu says a story on himself and Fiona is key to the issue. Photo / APN

Phil also claimed in his book that he was willing to talk to me about the non-payment of the money from the Woman's Weekly story, but that we "never had the conversation". That is not quite right. Fiona and I did, of course, see the article and I put it straight on Phil: "Did you get paid for this?" and he flat out said, "No." I didn't just ask him once, I asked on at least two occasions. He did finally acknowledge during a specially convened meeting at the office of my accountant at that time that he had been paid for the article. We had sat down to discuss various things and my lawyer was also present at the meeting. It was only then that he admitted receiving payment.

What hurt so much was that we had always worked on the principle of being straight with each other and upfront in all our dealings. Twice I asked him about the payment for the story and twice he denied receiving payment. I might have been prepared to let things go had he not gone to such lengths in his book to explain away the whole episode. But to actually believe that Fiona and I were not entitled to receive any money for the article ... I couldn't get my head around that, especially when I had been told there had been a substantial payment made for the piece. Later, he tried to contact me. I guess he wanted to try to smooth things over, but I just wasn't interested in hearing what he had to say. The damage had been done as far as I was concerned.

Jonah Lomu's <i>Jonah:My Story</i> has been updated.

If anyone needs any convincing of how much I cared for Phil and what that single betrayal meant to me, all they need to do is talk to my lawyer and accountant from back then. After that meeting with Phil when he admitted he had been paid, the emotion of the situation finally sank in: that my long-time relationship had been wrecked in the worst possible way. Before that meeting I had been just so disappointed, so angry. Now, though, it was different. I began crying and I couldn't stop. I cried not just for the loss of one father in my life ... I cried for the loss of a second.

Reproduced from Jonah: My Story (Updated Edition), with permission from Hachette New Zealand Ltd, published by Hodder Moa, $39.99 RRP, available nationwide today.