Lomu in the age of Twitter

18 Jun 1995: Jonah Lomu charges through the tackle of Mike Catt of England. Photo / Ben Radford /Allsport

When Jonah Lomu announced himself to the world at the Rugby World Cup some 20 years ago, he did so via that most traditional of mediums - the TV set.

He had no choice, really. Facebook, Reddit and YouTube were still 10 years away, Twitter 11 and Instagram 15. A vine was something grapes grew on and while the Graphics Interchange Format was eight years old, nobody knew a GIF would one day be a cool thing to embed in tweets and posts. Even the word 'blog' wasn't to be coined until 1999.

Lomu was rugby's first global superstar but he can't be blamed for failing to maximise his social-media profile because social media was a watercooler chat about the lead story in the paper.

But just say Jonah did what he did now, in a New Zealand-England semifinal at the 2015 World Cup (we'll ask you to suspend belief here and imagine the same players transplanted to a contemporary setting) with the country watching with a smartphone close at hand.

Here's what might happen*.

1. Jonah Lomu picks up a loose Graeme Bachop pass and beats three England players to score

2. A media man in New Zealand, Andrew Mulligan, springs into action

3. Mulligan soon realises his mistake, but not before a few of his 32,000 followers jump on board

4. Scotty Stevenson coins a nickname, and receives a few ignorant and casually racist replies. It sparks a predictable round of inane 'banter'

5) As that strand spirals out of control, a number of ex-internationals make themselves heard, while a few rugby enthusiasts try to ingratiate themselves to them

***

***

6. People start to pick up on the strange commentary

7. The first clever sod puts out a Mike Catt-themed GIF...

WHAT MIKE CATT LOOKS LIKE WHEN JONAH HAS THE BALL!

MIKE CATT BE LIKE...

8. And a meme is not far behind...

9. And a vine

10. Jonah scores again and a whole new set of tweets invade the Twitterverse

11. Later that night, Facebook comes alive

* The inspiration for this piece came from here