Jonah Lomu’s past heroics at the rugby World Cup will not help him get into this year’s All Blacks squad, selector Kieran Crowley says.
”We are starting with a clean slate. What he did (at the 1995 and 1999 World Cups) is in the past,”’ Crowley said today.
”We will be picking this year’s team on form.”
Lomu has not had a great start in the Super 12 after missing the first two rounds through injury and playing only 55 minutes against the Stormers last week. He failed to fire in the time he was on the field and appeared to lack the confidence to get involved.
With the Hurricanes unlikely to make the semifinals, Lomu has only eight more chances to impress the All Blacks selectors and coach John Mitchell.
Hurricanes coach Colin Cooper was coy today on whether Lomu would start against the Sharks in Durban on Saturday.
But he was prepared to shoulder some of the blame for Lomu’s lacklustre effort against the Stormers as he had rushed him back into the starting 15 after only one training session in three weeks.
”He is the sort of player who cannot afford to have two or three weeks of nothing. I’ll have to be smarter in the future with Jonah,” Cooper said.
Working in Lomu’s favour is a paucity of competition for the left wing as Fijians dominate the wing positions in the New Zealand Super 12 teams.
Leading the charge is the Blues’ Rupeni Caucaunibuca, while Aisea Tuilevu and Seru Rabeni have played well for the Highlanders.
Fiji’s Marika Vunibaka is one of the Crusaders’ wings and Samoa’s Lome Fa’atau has started two games for the Hurricanes.
Crowley said the surfeit of wings who were not available for the All Blacks was a concern but nothing new.
”We’ve had it in the NPC for the last couple of years. It’s exciting to see them playing such good rugby but from a selectors’ point of view we don’t have a lot of depth (on the wing).”
Adding to that was last year’s All Black wings being played out of position in the Super 12. Doug Howlett has been at fullback for the Blues and Caleb Ralph played centre for the Crusaders last weekend.
But Crowley said that would not affect their selection prospects. ”It just shows the class of those two and their versatility.”
Meanwhile, the Hurricanes team to play the Sharks will be named tomorrow with the elbow injury that sidelined prop Tony Penn last week the only concern.
Cooper said the win against the Stormers had been a timely tonic. ”It was a huge boost to their confidence. We had a really big scrum session (yesterday) and watching that it was obvious the intensity was there. That’s come from winning and from performing at scrum time.”
The Sharks have injury and judicial problems to sort out before they can name a team, with prop Deon Carstens charged with stomping on the head of Waratahs hooker Brendan Cannon last week. Carstens was expected to defend the charge at a hearing overnight. The Sharks have already lost skipper AJ Venter, who is suspended
for a headbutt, and will be without Springbok lock Albert van den Berg with a groin strain. – Sapa-NZPA