I was in my 1st year at uni in 1995 and one of my buddies was a 6' 4" rugby guy, formerly an England under 18 rugby international. In the run up to the 1995 rugby World Cup he'd been telling us about a tour they had gone on to the Southern Hemisphere and how they had been leading the All Blacks at half time, but how in hindsight he felt they had just been toying with them. In the second half they brought on a 'massive' winger who tore them to shreds.......and my buddy warned us to watch out for this guy at the World Cup!
In terms of the impact he made on the sport, he ranks with a select few others in my lifetime for whom a combination of overwhelming physical superiority aligned to sheer natural talent seemed to defy what I thought was possible. I'm thinking of Mike Tyson in the '80s, the original Ronaldo, Usain Bolt. The kinds of athletes/sportsmen who draw gasps and draw people not normally into the sport in question into the action, making hairs stand on end. Such a terrible shame he was cut down in his prime.
RIP big man.
