SALUTE TO A JUGGERNAUT
How the Boks stopped Lomu
HE was the most famous player in the most famous rugby match ever played and he was not yet 20.
In the space of six matches at the World Cup in South Africa in 1995, Jonah Lomu, the shy teenage son of a single mother from a poor Auckland suburb, who died this week aged 40, had become rugby’s first superstar. They said the New Zealander was a phenomenon, a monster, a freak. Those were the predictable descriptions of a kid who stood six-foot-five, weighed nearly 120kg and could run the 100m in under 11 seconds.
The most outrageous was that one could easily mistake him for the progeny of wrestler Giant Haystacks and Olympic sprint champion Linford Christie.
Lomu’s first two tests for the All Blacks were defeats against France. Astonishingly, Lomu failed to score in either. More astounding, both were played in New Zealand.
Still, the Kiwis had high hopes for the youngster who had made a name in Sevens rugby. The world soon took notice too. On May 27 1995, Lomu scored twice against Ireland in the All Blacks’ World Cup opening match.
The first try started when he got the ball just 2m from his tryline. Former Australian player Peter FitzSimons recalled: “The Irish threw everything at him. He bumped, he weaved, he shimmied, he shook, he outpaced, he slowed down and then accelerated once more.” Seven dazed Irishmen were left in his wake.
The Welsh rugby writer Stephen Jones had the foresight to pen a feature on Lomu the day before the match. In its editions prepared before kick-off, the London Sunday Times gave it a full-page spread. It was remarkable prescience.
It was also a warning of what England could expect in the semifinals. By then the rugby world was on Lomu alert. The Newlands crowd that Sunday afternoon on June 18 did not have long to wait. The big feller received a pass just 70 seconds into the match.
He jigged, jagged and weaved and then just ran over a few Englishmen. He had only fullback Mike Catt to beat. Years later, Catt recalled: “I was No 15 in the team. That meant 14 other guys had missed him.” Or been shoved aside. Lomu just bowled him over and Catt recalled lying on his back as the winger scored the first of his four tries that afternoon.
New Zealand won 45-29, the outcome as convincing as the scoreline suggests. The day before South Africa had scraped to a 19-15 win over France in a Durban deluge. The great denouement had arrived and the only question was: could the Boks stop Jonah Lomu?
It turned out they could, because Bok coach Kitch Christie had a plan. For just over 100 minutes, the new star of rugby was eclipsed by several brave bit players on the field and a world icon off it.
If Lomu appeared nervous in meeting Nelson Mandela ahead of the kick-off, the president inspired those who were wearing the same jersey he did that winter Saturday.
Joel Stransky, who kicked all the Boks’ points including the extra-time drop goal that won the final 15-12, this week recalled the “two-pronged attack”. It meant cutting off Lomu’s ball supply and curbing his space.
Japie Mulder, who brought off a famous tackle on Lomu as the wing closed in on the Bok tryline, recalled that the team had gone out with a specific plan to stop the big man.
“The idea was to force Jonah to come inside where our centres could tackle him. We knew that if he could get past James Small [who was marking Lomu] on the outside we would have trouble. And he had the speed to give us trouble,” said Mulder.
Lomu managed that once, but a YouTube video shows Mulder cutting across to tackle him into touch. You can hear the commentator saying of the tackle: “They’ll talk about that one for years.” They still do in New Zealand where the All Black captain on the day, Sean Fitzpatrick, revealed the video was being used to teach schoolboy rugby players how to tackle.
If Mulder had missed the tackle, however, Chester Williams was waiting. The Bok left wing had come across to help cover.
“All our planning was around Jonah,” said Williams. “Kitch said we should prevent Jonah from getting the ball, and getting it on the front foot.”
It required pressure on the New Zealand halfbacks, according to Williams. “We needed to ensure that Andrew Mehrtens and Graeme Bachop were in poor positions and could not allow Jonah space.”
Stransky said the Bok plan also meant shifting the scrum a little so that the Bok loose forwards could quickly get into the channels through which the All Blacks hoped to send their young juggernaut.
“At the lineout it was a matter of getting one or two guys to stand outside so that we could defend the inside channel with bigger numbers.”
On the outside, instead of using the touchline as the last defender and leaving Small on his own, the Boks stood a little wider, went up on defence a bit quicker and forced Lomu to take the long way round.
“If he did [go the long way round] we had numbers we could get across and defend behind James. But most importantly we would push [Lomu] back infield towards the traffic. And we thought that we could team-tackle him as opposed to one-on-one,” said Stransky.
“That tactic meant the All Blacks midfielders were not inclined to make the pass to the player on the outside because instinctively they’d realise he was under pressure.”
According to Stransky, it all paid off. “Firstly the scrum, and the way the forwards manoeuvred, stopped the ball getting out to [the outside] and, secondly, the rush defence on the outside meant Lomu got much less ball because the centres rather carried it up into the midfield.
“And when he did get the ball, he was in the traffic so it made life very difficult for the poor guy,” Stransky said.
New Zealand tried to counter this by bringing Lomu in on the blindside. “But Mark Andrews and Joost [van der Westhuizen] made good tackles on him.”
Van der Westhuizen, in an interview in 2011, said: “I think he fell over me.” But it was just self-deprecation.
“I just saw this gap opening up and Jonah Lomu coming through. I just knew for a split second either your name is going to be Michael Catt for the rest of your life, or take him down. Ag, I think in a sense I was a bit lucky. I was well prepared. My mind was so focused on him that I just went for him.”
Van der Westhuizen said the Boks were so well prepared to take on Lomu, “I think we would have tackled each other just to get to Jonah”.
Rugby, a team game, has such individual moments and in the case of Small these were greater because he was the man assigned to shadow Lomu. Stransky said the team had not wanted the right wing to feel that he was alone against the big Kiwi.
“In a game like that you’re obviously quite nervous and stressed. I think James was probably under more stress and more pressure than anyone else because he had to stand in front of the big guy.
“As much as we didn’t want him to stand there alone, if things didn’t go according to plan, he would have been alone. He showed tremendous courage the way he made the right decisions, the way he got in Lomu’s face when he had to.”
There is a photograph of Small chasing Lomu like a terrier. Stransky remembered the moment. “James grabbed hold and he hung on for dear life and we dragged Lomu to the ground. I thought he was incredible. James was courageous and strong and he was always like that, on that day especially.”
Targeting Lomu showed “tremendous respect for this unbelievable player”, said Stransky.
“You don’t know how many guys scored because he was a dummy runner or because he off-loaded, but the fact that he never scored shows how much respect we had for him.”
Williams played his last game against the All Blacks in 2000 at Ellis Park, scored a try in a 46-40
He bumped, he weaved, he shimmied, he shook, he outpaced, he slowed and accelerated We were so well prepared I think we would have tackled each other just to get to Jonah
victory and marked Lomu. For him keeping the wing try-less against the Boks was one of the team’s finest accomplishments.
“It was a great compliment for the team knowing that we were playing against the greatest wing the world had ever seen.”
Lomu’s legacy may have been greater than just his playing ability. Watching on TV how the big All Black ran over Catt at Newlands, Rupert Murdoch said to a flunkey: “I have to have that player.”
It was the first step in the media mogul’s $500-million commitment to a TV deal that turned an amateur game into the professional sport of today.