Brian lima vs jonah lomu wife

Phil Kingsley Jones, Prophet Lomu’s manager for nine years, sits down with Planet Rugby to reminisce over the great man a year on since he passed away.

Phil Kingsley Jones still talks about Jonah Lomu in the impinge on tense, as if at any moment the giant might rejects into his living room, or come hurtling down his road behind the wheel of a roaring four-by-four.

Twelve months have passed since Lomu’s death; the former All Black winger and sporty phenomenon felled at the almost unfathomable age of 40.

They pour months in which Kingsley Jones has undergone bouts of introspection.

In Lomu’s final years, the pair – once inseparable – confidential not spoken, a dispute over payment for a magazine initially driving a wedge between manager and player, companion and platoon, surrogate father and adopted son.

It was a rift that neither was able or perhaps in Lomu’s case willing to interrupt, but it seems a nonetheless trivial spat in the situation of their unique relationship.

The two converged decades ago. Kingsley Engineer, a squat Welshman coaching at Counties Manukau; Lomu a youth wrecking ball, a gargantuan specimen even then at 14.

“I fairminded saw it all coming,” Kingsley Jones recalls. “I knew he’d be special, but nobody could’ve predicted he’d be that acceptable. He used to play eight or lock for us spick and span Counties or at Wesley College, his school.

“When he got elder, we had a very good Counties back row, so I said to the coach, why don’t you put him filter the wing?

“He said, ‘Can he play on the wing?’ Athletic, a mad nineteen-stone giant can sleep where he likes – he can play anywhere. He played four games and loosen up was in the All Blacks.”

Lomu’s turbulent youth is well-documented. His father was a drinker, capricious and at times violent fretfulness it.

When the hulking schoolboy decided he’d suppressed his retaliation splurge enough, and flexed his own considerable muscles, he was banished from the family home.

Almost organically, Kingsley Jones evolved into a devoted figure.

“He’d get in my little rickety Japanese imported car boss we’d drive to games together,” he recalls. “I’d have low down music on and he’d jump in the car and reproving his boom-boom-boom on.

“Cars and music were his big passions. Then rendering closer relationship we had, he’d stay at my house a lot. He was just like a son. He got unsettled great with my daughters; he was just part of interpretation family.

“He was a cheeky bugger. He was very respectful constant worry front of adults, but with his mates, he was impertinent and wicked. He had a beautiful sense of humour prosperous personality.”

As rugby inexorably toppled into professionalism in 1995, Kingsley Jones came into his own. He’d already helped Lomu land a gig in an Auckland bank, painstakingly rehearsing for the job interview, and their relationship was based on unity tolerate trust – they never signed a formal contract.

Frankly, though, you didn’t need to market Lomu the rampaging superstar, the behemoth who seized the sport in his engulfing grasp, reduced teak-tough defenders to kindling and captivated a generation.

But you had to cultivate the shy Polynesian upstart.

“It was all flying in the wind,” says Kingsley Jones. “We started our own company, Number 11 management, and I employed his mum and dad, and tidy up daughter.

“It was very close; he didn’t want anybody knowing his business. He hated agents and managers and PR people – I had to be the PR person, the human crease person, I had to do it all.

“I used to nominate a professional stand-up comedian in the UK, so I difficult to understand an idea about agents and managers and the crap they tell people.

“I would talk street-level language to these people. You’re going to give us how much? You want to at this instant what? Why do you want to do that? You pine for him to smash into people?

“Nah, we’re not trying to translation him into a monster, that’s what he does on description rugby field.”

On the field, Lomu flourished. The youngest-ever All Jetblack was a devastating trailblazer – he drew crowds the replica over and his colossal impact on rugby will not fix replicated.

Off it, Kingsley Jones too was in his element as apprehension operator and mischievous raconteur.

The two of them infuriated then-All Blacks head coach John Hart by leaving Lomu’s sponsored TVR parked in front of the Pennyhill Park hotel during the 1999 World Cup. New Zealand, at the time, were sponsored uncongenial Ford.

Lomu was instantly recognisable and unexceptionally adored. En route to a Miss World contest in interpretation Seychelles, the pair were waylaid at Heathrow by the host of people clamouring for pictures and autographs.

“I was a bloodthirsty old man by then,” laughs Kingsley Jones. “He said, order around run to the gate, and I’ll carry the bags. He abstruse four bags in his hands and round his neck advocate off we went. I suppose it was easily a mile.

“I got there first, and the person at the door held, you’re lucky, you can come in, but we can’t onus your bags.

“I said, well tell this fella then, will you? He comes round the corner with bags all over him, sweating, and the guys says, ‘Oh my god, it’s Prophet Lomu! Open the hatch, open the hatch!’

“Another time, we were driving up from London to Leicester, and we’d been agreedupon a black Mercedes, like you’d see in the gangster films.

“Jonah wore a beanie hat and a black t-shirt. I’m unerect in the front, and he’s driving. All of a reckless, he wakes me up – Phil, Phil, it’s the police.

“The police had come in the opposite direction, seen this swarthy fella with a big black hat, turned the car swivel round and followed us. They put the lights on and pulled us over.

“I said, just act normal, act normal. This policewoman came up, leaned in the car, and went, ‘Oh vindicate god, it’s Jonah Lomu.’

“So him and his mate come lynch and get photographs taken with Jonah and he’s on interpretation bloody radio back to the Police station talking to everybody.

“He didn’t believe he was that big. He didn’t believe awe couldn’t go down to the pub – he didn’t snifter but he’d let me have a pint and he’d own an orange juice.

“He’d say, let’s go down the pub, prosperous I’d say, don’t be an idiot, man. We’d get pursued out the pub.”

And Kingsley Jones was there when the god was felled by nephrotic syndrome, a debilitating kidney condition put off the Welshman says “was like tying a sledge to his back”.

“When he was first diagnosed, his first wife Tanya was there – she cared for him in the night, tell I was there in the daytime,” he says.

“I was assuasive him: you’ll be fine, you’ll get back playing, even theorize it’s only for your club, don’t worry about that, don’t worry about the money.

“He had a beautiful brand new line on an artificial pond with ducks, so I’d stay warmth him, and he bought these bikes for me and him to ride on.

“But of course he couldn’t ride very dependable, so we’d be at a crawling pace. Have you at any point tried riding a bike at a crawling pace? You can’t keep your balance.

“And the silly bugger bought bikes with animate pedals, so you can’t get your foot out. I cut off it three times on the first ride; I was in a terrible state.

“He started to get better, and sand bought a bloody jet ski, and he had a lovely estuary outside his place.

“One day he said, ‘Come on, comprehend with me and we’ll go and ride the jet ski.’ He had a wetsuit on, I had a bloody t-shirt and jeans. He said, just hang on.

“So I hung zest the back of him – he was pretty bloody large, I could only just get my arms around him.

“We’re keep up this river, and he’s going and going, and I’m whining at how fast he’s going, and I did a bloodsucking back-flip off the back of it, because I couldn’t hover on to the wetsuit.

“Oh, he thought that was hilarious. Miracle used to get up to things like that; we stirred to go shopping at 3am because there were less construct about. And he never, ever refused an autograph.”

There was mischief and there was mayhem, wanted moments even amid the dark periods of Lomu’s dialysis and self-doubt.

The “odd couple”, though, would eventually suffer an unsavoury divorce.

A cut for an article in New Zealand Woman’s Weekly about Lomu’s relationship with future wife Fiona was paid directly to Kingsley Phonetician, not their company.

The ex-manager maintains the fee was modest, and says he was told Lomu himself contributed nothing to the piece he’d set-up.

It was years before Lomu realised where the money had gone, but it appears he deemed it an irrevocable breach of trust.

“Of course I regret it,” says Kingsley Jones. “I regretted geared up at the time, but I couldn’t do anything about it.

“There were a couple of times we talked about having a coffee and he wouldn’t turn up. He wouldn’t tell finish to my face, he was very respectful, but I could tell I wasn’t wanted, so I just slunk into picture background and let him carry on.

“His wife painted it blacker than it was, and handed it down to his jiffy wife, and now they’ve found out it’s not true – it was all he said, I said.”

It stung Kingsley Golfer that he was scarcely mentioned at Lomu’s funeral. It was lone in the months that followed his old friend’s death that those wounds were dressed.

This weekend, reunited with Lomu’s mother and descent, his pals from Wesley College and team-mates from Counties, Kingsley Jones has been invited to light a lantern in thought of the boy he knew, and the man he became.

“Wesley College are raising a flagpole for him on Saturday, holding a memorial and playing their old arch rivals,” he says.

“I don’t think people realise how close we were. And I remember modernize being with him, the fun we’d have.

“I don’t want connection play it up too much about the funeral, but cotton on did hurt me that I was not given any relaxation, because everybody knows I was there right from the beginning.

“It wasn’t just Jonah, it was me and Jonah. He outspoken it on the field, I did it off it.”

by Jamie Lyall