Big man gives sick kids a lift

DUBLIN - Giant All Black wing Jonah Lomu has charmed sick 9-year-old Irish twins Aoife and Jenny Hoey for Irish children's charities.

Lomu met the twins, both regularly in hospital with serious lung conditions, and cystic fibrosis sufferer Matthew Cronin, 17, to help out charities Operation Rudolph and Bubblegum Club.

Irish centre Brian O'Driscoll helps the charities, so they wanted to get an All Black involved.

All talk and giggles before the big man arrived, the twins clammed up when they saw him.

"He's huge," Aoife said while waiting.

"I want to ask him what he eats that makes him so big." She thought it might be Weet-Bix.

"Oh yeah, truckloads of that," Lomu grinned.

He soon had them beaming with delight, as he lifted them into his arms for a charity photo shoot, chatting amiably.

"C'mon ladies, let's go," he said to the beaming pair.

Both girls had parts of their lungs removed last year due to their illness, their nurse Carol Kennedy said.

Irish pop star Ronan Keating is also involved with the charities, which hope to raise 250,000 Irish punts ($670,000) for children in crisis.

But the twins failed in their ultimate aim; to take Lomu to a McDonald's restaurant.

He had to go to practice, to prepare for the test against Ireland in Dublin.

Kennedy had advised them against it anyway.

"Carol said that he would go into McDonald's and ask for 25 burgers," Jenny said. "Somebody else would come up to the desk and ask for a burger and the woman would say, 'No, there are none left'."

Operation Rudolph spokesman Ian McKeever said Lomu had been the All Black most of the children had wanted to see.

"But we were surprised how familiar the kids were with a number of the players - Andrew Mehrtens and others as well."

- NZPA