Have we seen the best of Jonah?

By Chris Laidlaw

There is savage irony in the fact that the only place the world s most wanted rugby player is not in demand is in the All Blacks' training squad.

Jonah Lomu's life is a complex trimester.

At one extreme there is the supreme simplicity of a dedicated home and family life.

At the other is the status of a publicly owned sporting
superstar of Olympian proportions, the most bankable rugby player in the history of the game.

Between these sits the third leg, his job as a player who is contractually bound to deliver results in what has become a gruelling, all-year-round professional schedule.

The three dimensions are not getting along all that well together. And is it any wonder? Jonah is an athlete who clearly needs all the home nurturing he can get, particularly after a mercilessly public marriage bust-up.

Is it realistic, therefore, to accept invitations to just about every moment of glitz on the world calendar and still hope to remain focused and ready to deliver the goods athletically?

Realism must prevail in spite of invitations to hobnob with stars on the set of a James Bond movie or ogle Miss World as part of the judging panel.

Hollywood only wants hot properties and if Jonah loses his place as the star of the All Blacks, the talent scouts will rapidly lose his address.

It takes a personality of extraordinary maturity and
strength of character to do all these things. Jonah, for all his patent sincerity and his obvious desire to do the right thing, is no Michael Jordan.

He carries the additional burden of a debilitating medical condition that limits his aerobic capacity (exactly how much, nobody seems to know).

What we do know is that his workrate on the field has declined steadily since 1996.

The possibility of moving him to No 8, which was seriously considered last year, has been ruled out precisely because of this shortage of puff.

That is an enormous pity. In two or three years he could conceivably have become the greatest No 8 in the history of the game.

As things stand, he has little chance of becoming the greatest winger and the longer he goes at something less than full capacity or full focus there is a risk that he may end up as little better than ordinary. Nobody wants that to happen.

Lomu's ejection from the All Black training squad is a smoke signal for all the world to see that John Hart won't have him until his fitness is considerably improved.

This season will be the supreme test of Jonah's ability to regain the unprecedented heights he reached in 1995-96.

To achieve that he will need to develop more basic acceleration and to place more faith in his undoubted but rarely seen ability to swerve and step than in his penchant for imitating a double-decker bus.

It will, of course, also depend on the abilities of those inside him to create the space without which he is quickly reduced to mortality.

Have we already seen the best of this extraordinary sporting enigma?

I suspect we have, but would like nothing better than to be proven wrong.

Pictured: Jonah Lomu