ODT Online rugby writer Jeff Cheshire looks at the impact Jonah Lomu had on those who grew up watching him.
I was two years old in 1995, but I knew who Jonah was.
While the rest of the world was being wowed by this giant, my excitement came from yelling "Jonah, go Jonah" whenever he got the ball.
The hype had clearly not escaped me. I may have had little understanding of rugby and likely did not know who had won or lost, but there was no doubting who my favourite player was.
By the time the next World Cup came around, I was not alone. Everyone of my age knew who Jonah Lomu was. If they did not at the start of the tournament, they certainly did by the end.
There was no bigger star in the game and no player that everyone wanted to emulate more. He became the idol, the hero, for a generation of rugby-loving Kiwis. Prior eras have seen names such as Nepia, Jarden, Meads, Williams and Kirwan fill that role. For us it was Jonah.
His impact became clear when scrolling through Facebook after his death. That he was the subject of nearly every post on my News Feed is not surprising. However the overwhelming response along the lines of "he is the reason I like rugby" or "he was the reason I started playing rugby", really made his impact hit home.
Fanatics and casual fans alike mourned his passing. It seemed wrong to focus so much on one man after the tragedies around the world recently. But we did just that.
It becomes quite significant after all, when you lose the man who spurned a deep passion or emotional attachment to something. That something being rugby and the location being New Zealand, only made it more wide-reaching.
Despite that, his on-field impact was hard to truly appreciate at the time. It was only as years trickled past and players came and went, none of whom could do what Lomu could do, that you understood how special he was. At the same time you started to trawl through the history books and seek out videos of old games, discovering that no one had quite dominated like that before him either.
Some will point out his limitations, but his strengths more than made up for them. Teams became obsessed with him and planned their whole defensive systems around stopping him.
Even then most of them couldn't keep the big man quiet. He could beat you in so many ways. While he is sometimes labelled a player who just ran over people, he also possessed speed, acceleration, balance and reasonable footwork.
That made him the ultimate attacking weapon. He could score and set up tries from anywhere. Critics will say he could only do that because of his physique. Perhaps they have a point, he was not the most skillful or positionally sound player. But being able to make the most of your physique is important and if it is one of your strengths, then so be it.
Nowadays we all try to dub someone as the "next Jonah". Everybody wants to experience the excitement of seeing such a player in full-flight again. But such comparisons are futile. There have been other big and athletics wingers, but none who have had those attributes in the same capacity as Lomu.
Even in today's game he would be a physical and athletic freak. He would not have the same room to work with on attack, but he may have developed different areas of his game and done different things to combat that.
Most importantly, he was a proud All Black. His desire to represent his country was unbelievable, as were the lengths he went to in order to do it. He made you proud to be a New Zealander and showed so many people at a young age just what that black jersey meant.
There is so much more that could be said, but most of it has been already. By all accounts he was a great person. Most of us did not know him personally though. To the rugby fans who grew up watching him, he was a childhood idol and because of that, he will be sorely missed.
