The try that defined Jonah

Jonah Lomu steamrolled over England's Mike Catt at the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Photo / Getty

It was the try - and game - that defined Jonah Lomu. Michael Brown looks back at that 1995 World Cup semifinal against England.

As far as good ideas go, it didn't come close to anything Thomas Edison came up with.

In fact, it was about as good as the guy who decided in 1876 that Alexander Graham Bell's telephone wouldn't take off.

Wing Tony Underwood had unwisely taunted Jonah Lomu before the 1995 Rugby World Cup semifinal between his England team and the All Blacks by saying he lacked pace. To top it off, Underwood then winked at Lomu during the haka.

"I told him I was going to wipe it off his face," Lomu recalled in July this year.

He did more than that. Lomu terrorised Underwood that day, scoring four tries in that famous victory, including one when he ran over the top of Mike Catt.

The unfortunate England fullback said this week that moment "put me on the map" for the "wrong reasons". But it propelled Lomu to the forefront - a position he still occupies even in death.

"It was a culmination of a whole lot of things," Lomu remembered fondly. "The [All Blacks] players had taken the TV out of my room so I had no TV and no newspapers.

They only gave me the clippings I needed, which was Tony Underwood saying that I wasn't quick enough to match it with him. That's like holding a red rag to a bull.

"There was one part when I was actually talking to him. I showed him the outside and scragged him and threw him out and then I was talking back and I said, 'is that all you've got?'

"I played the speed game with them and then, after that, decided to run over them."

Run over Catt, more specifically.

It was a moment that left broadcaster Keith Quinn speechless, Lomu collecting the ball from a long Graeme Bachop pass 30m out, beating the fruitless attempts of Underwood, being ankle tapped by England captain Will Carling before running straight into and over Catt.

Quinn's "oh, oh" commentary wasn't what he had hoped, and planned, to say but summed up the moment perfectly.

Quinn, writing about the try on his website keithquinnrugby.com earlier this year, said he had an inkling Lomu would score an impressive try and had planned to be ready with a 'headline' piece of commentary.

He wrote down a handful of phrases, including "all muscle and pump" from an American magazine he had been reading, and was ready to use them.

"When the giant set off carrying the ball in his famous run, I glanced at my notes," Quinn wrote. "But the pre-prepared clipping was not there. It had fallen somewhere. So, distracted, I could only utter 'Lomu ... oh ... oh ...' on the sound track as he scored.

"I was initially wild with myself at the cock-up but, as it has become my trademark piece of commentary in the 20 years since, I have come to love it, actually. So what the heck, I'll claim it as one of my best moments at the microphone."

It was also voted by fans on MasterCard's Priceless Moments poll as the greatest World Cup try of all time. Glen Osborne, who played fullback for the All Blacks that day and ran in support of Lomu, joked that "it was my try" and that he would have gone on to have the career the big wing did. But no one else could have scored that try. It was, quite simply, a moment that changed world rugby.

Lomu's performance that day helped usher in the professional era. Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch was so taken by it, he was persuaded he needed to try to galvanise the sport into a fully professional code. The game changed. As did Lomu's world.

"After the England semifinal, I went out to buy some toothpaste and the whole mall followed me to the shop," he remembered. "Here I was out the back in a storage cupboard waiting for the security guy to clear a way for me to get back to my hotel. That's when I realised my life wasn't my own."

Catt hasn't been able to forget, either. The thing is, he knew before the semifinal what might be coming his way.

"I had done my homework," he told Newstalk ZB this week. "I was watching the [All Blacks v] Scotland game and he pretty much did the same thing to Gavin Hastings and he was three stone (19kg) heavier than me at 16 stone (102kg). I was 13 stone (83kg) dripping wet.

"When Jonah came running at me, I was thinking, 'right, get your feet close, you want to drive through the player' but, unfortunately, all I remember is him scoring the try behind me.

"The ball went past Tony Underwood, who conveniently steps in to avoid Jonah at every cost. Will Carling comes across and ankle taps him. Instead of Jonah running upright using his footwork or speed to get around me, he actually stumbles towards me and that's probably the reason he ran straight over the top of me because, otherwise, he would have just run around me like he did three times after that.

"He was, as Will Carling said, a freak of nature."

It was perfect fodder for the world's media. Why wouldn't they latch on to the story? Here was a wing who had the body of a lock (he was 1.96m and 120kg) but who could run 100m in under 11 seconds. It was men against boys but, at 20, Lomu was the oversized boy.

"Everything the rugby world warned that Jonah Lomu would do to Grand Slam England, he did," the UK Telegraph reported. "He began with a try after 70 seconds [it was more like two minutes], followed with three more and at all times had seasoned opponents in a state of impotence, if not panic.

"It was a hair-raising marvel of a performance from this 6 foot 5 inch giant of a man, blessed with a strength and physical presence way beyond his 20 years. From the kickoff at a full house Newlands it was: 'Good afternoon, Tony Underwood. Here I am to make your life a misery for the next 79 minutes 50 seconds.'

"In defying all the tenets of a team game, here was one player who spent the semifinal of the 1995 World Cup reducing a previously competent, well-drilled England team, seeking an 11th consecutive victory, to bedraggled also-rans. It was embarrassing; it was also inspiring, a sporting occasion to treasure.

"Whenever in that opening 20 minutes of ice-cool, calculating rugby, New Zealand cared to employ Lomu, England were in trouble. Perhaps not paralysed, they were Lomu-lised, well and truly. If New Zealand do not win the World Cup at Ellis Park, Johannesburg, next Saturday against South Africa, there will have to be a stewards' inquiry."

There have, of course, been many inquiries, none more so than by the All Blacks coach at the time, Laurie Mains, who was convinced his side were poisoned on the eve of the final against South Africa.

Lomu didn't blame the 15-12 extra-time defeat on food poisoning - "Would we have won if we'd been fully fit?" he asked in his autobiography, Jonah: My Story. "Don't know. Who can say? I've accepted the loss. You can't go through life making excuses." - but it added to the legend in some ways. South Africa undoubtedly did a good job to shut him down but he also wasn't running on full power.

His team-mate Josh Kronfeld, who made a speciality of running on Lomu's shoulder throughout his own storied All Blacks career, came to know what it felt like.

"There was one particular time [Otago] were playing Counties," Kronfeld told Radio Sport this week, "and I saw Jonah was coming off the wing and into the centres. It was obvious what was going to happen. I had him lined up.

"The thing about Jonah is that you can't wait for him to knock you over. You had to go at him as hard as he's running at you, which is a pretty scary thing to want to do. I ran at him and I got him just before he got his body down to make the hit. I sunk into it beautifully. I could just feel everything working. I could feel him starting to go down. I had my arms wrapped around him tightly. All of a sudden, I hit the ground. I looked up and he's run through John Leslie and scored under the posts. I was thinking, 'how the hell did that just happen?' I had him.

"As I'm getting up, I look at my hand and I have a piece of shorts in them. Technology couldn't even stop him. It failed me. He was just so powerful and strong he could do stuff no one else could."

Underwood and his England team-mates had already found that out. Underwood brothers Tony and Rory went on to profit from that match, famously appearing in a Pizza Hut commercial as two pint-sized players in a dressing room alongside a giant Lomu chomping on a pizza before he was upended by the Underwoods' mother.

Lomu, as a man and player, had all the toppings, and Tony Underwood eventually came to accept that.

"After 14 years, I've stopped dreaming - or having nightmares - about it," he said in 2009. "At the time, I was feeling fairly confident. I'd played well all season.

"The first try was the worst. Lomu left me on the ground, then trampled over both Will Carling and Mike Catt, and the onslaught started. You've got to look back in awe at the way he took us apart. It was just a great time for rugby. I can't imagine there would ever have been a better time to be in our sport."