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‘We decided we’d treat him like a normal player … which went well’
By Jon Newcombe
Round Tony Underwood, past Will Carling and through Mike Catt … it’s a sequence of events every bit as memorable in the sporting world as Torvill & Dean’s Bolero, but rather more brutal than beautiful.
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Jonah Lomu’s rampaging run two minutes into the Rugby World Cup 1995 semi-final against England, which can now be watched on the new RugbyPass app, couldn’t be choreographed if you tried and is still making a lasting impression on the three fall guys in white, who were powerless to stop the All Blacks winger in his pomp.
For their part, Carling and Underwood are only too happy to relive their memories nearly 30 years on from a game that changed Lomu’s world and rugby forever. Both are interviewed in the ‘Lomu – The Lost Tapes’ documentary, which will also be available to watch on the RugbyPass app this Saturday.
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“We decided we’d treat him like a normal player, which went well,” Carling laughs, as he recalls the fateful match that ruined England’s of making a second consecutive Rugby World Cup final.
“Trouble was he was faster and just about three times the size of a normal winger.”
Carling, who was about to lead England for a then-record 52nd time, knew they were potentially in trouble before they’d set foot on the beautifully manicured Newlands pitch.
“World Cups are when you line up along one another and the Cape Town tunnel is very, very narrow, and I turned and about three or four down your eyes went up and over this colossus and you’re trying to tell your face to show no reaction,” he said.
“You watched him on TV, that was one thing, and then coming up against him, in real life was something else; he was big, he was present, it was just phenomenal.”
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Tony Underwood, Lomu’s opposite number, has always been very gracious in defeat and has turned a negative experience into a positive one.
A jokey Pizza Hut commercial caused a few laughs at his expense but earned him a decent crust, and in recent years he’s used the experience as an example of resilience in his role as an executive coach, delivering ‘Facing your Jonah’ webinars.
In an old interview with The Rugby Paper, Underwood said: My ‘Jonah’ moment – the 1995 World Cup semi-final against New Zealand – is well-documented and is emotional baggage that I carry to this day. Whenever people come up to me, that’s the conversation they want to have rather than maybe reflect on any tries I’d scored, like the one against Australia that helped us get into the semi-final in the first place. By bringing it up, they are reminding me I wasn’t good enough. And that’s fine, I have learnt to deal with it and not only deal with it but to reframe it and turn it into a positive.
“I used to go into every game thinking, ‘I hope I’m good enough, I hope I turn up …’ You might call it imposter syndrome. That day I didn’t turn up and my worst fears came true but I focused on the fact that I bounced back and achieved peak performance again as a member of the successful 1997 Lions squad that went to South Africa and a Newcastle Falcons squad that won promotion and then the Premiership in the space of two-and-a-bit years.”
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Until he kicked the ball out to signal England won RWC 2003, Mike Catt’s international career had been defined by the moment he was folded like a deckchair. As the last man between Lomu and the try line, he didn’t stand a chance.
“Every time I come to a new job, there’s a picture of me getting run over by Jonah, even kids who weren’t born at the time say to me, ‘I’ve been on YouTube, and I’ve seen Jonah, and this stuff,” he mused in the latest edition of The Rugby Journal.
“It’s part of my journey. I don’t have a problem with it. It’s good banter and I wasn’t the only one.”
It’ll be 10 years in November that Lomu passed away but his legacy lives on, and thanks to the documentary fresh insight is given into his character and the challenges he faced from those closest to him on and off the pitch.
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