In an extract from No Rules – The James Small Story, former Springbok centre Japie Mulder explains how they stopped All Blacks wing Jonah Lomu in the 1995 World Cup final.
former Springbok centre Japie Mulder explains how they stopped All Blacks wing Jonah Lomu in the 1995 World Cup final.
The room went dead quiet when Jonah Lomu ran over Michael Catt on his way to scoring one of four tries that day.‘Jeepers boys, what are we going to do? We have a problem here.’When everyone left the room, and it was just myself and James, he said to me, ‘Bush, I will make sure Lomu always has to cut inside, we only have a problem if he is given space on the outside and goes around us because of his size and strength. When he comes in, he’s your problem and you will have to look after him.
On the way to the final, we played the Roger Whitaker song ‘If’. It goes ‘I don’t believe in If anymore …’ and says you mustn’t have regrets. James related well to that song and it also had a strong influence on my well-being upstairs. Even today, if my mates are at a party and they hear it they will phone me and make me listen to it. And it still makes me emotional.