When Jonah Lomu first ran at us in secondary schools rugby - with the ball tucked under one giant arm - he would laugh in the face of head-on tacklers. Not a gentle chuckle, either. Nor a derisive snort. These were bellyaching guffaws. He sincerely found it hilarious that mere humans - normal-sized ones at that - would try to tackle him.
And, boy, he was having fun.
I was a lousy player at that level of the game and every other one I played in, but some of the other blokes in the Waiuku College 1st XV were good footy players. A few went on to representative honours. No matter to Jonah. He was fair and even-handed in his skittling of defenders: good players, bad players - we were all flicked aside like beads of sweat from a shaken forehead.
That first year, he was a lock in Wesley College’s 2nd XV and was, by Jonah standards, a shade on the skinny side. But people were already talking about him. Before he became world rugby’s first global star - back when the flattening of Mike Catt was a mere twinkling in his eye - everyone involved in Counties secondary schools rugby knew Jonah was something different. Especially those of us unfortunate enough to find ourselves standing in front of him on a Saturday morning.
