LONG READ Is the age of the supersized wing over?

This year marks the 30th anniversary of one of the most memorable adverts in television history. It featured the Underwood family – Tony and Rory, and their mum – combining forces to pinch Jonah Lomu’s new stuffed crust pizza from under his nose.

Revenge, of sorts, for what Lomu had done to Tony Underwood a few months earlier during the 1995 World Cup semi-final, running through him like a pizza wheel through a Margherita.

Poor Tony. He won 28 caps all told, including one for the Lions on their triumphant tour of South Africa in 1997, and scored 13 Test tries but he’ll always be remembered as ‘that bloke who got trampled on by Lomu’.

Underwood was an average size for a winger back then. He stood 5ft 9ins and weighed 13 ½ stones, an inch taller than his brother, Rory, also a winger, whose 49 tries in 85 Tests remains an English record.

That June day in Newlands in 1995, when New Zealand crushed England 45-29, was a turning point in rugby union. In the space of eighty minutes, Lomu, all 6ft 5in and 18 ½ stones of him, transformed the perception of wing play. Bigger became better. In a sense it was an injustice to Lomu; there was far more to the extraordinary Kiwi than just – to paraphrase Will Carling – his ‘freakish’ size. He had balance, he had vision and he had agility.

Pre-1995 wings had generally been Underwood’s size. There was the odd exception – New Zealand’s John Kirwan in the 1980s was 6ft 4 and 14 ½ stone – but Lomu changed the rules of the game.

Suddenly every team wanted their own Lomu, and many were the times one opened a newspaper to read about ‘the next Jonah Lomu’.

Suddenly every team wanted their own Lomu, and many were the times one opened a newspaper to read about ‘the next Jonah Lomu’. So desperate did England become in their pursuit of the Holy Grail they forked out a huge pile of cash in 2008 to entice Lesley Vainikolo to switch codes.

The ‘Volcano’, as the 17 ½ stone Tongan-born Vainikolo was dubbed in rugby league, had scored 149 tries in 152 games for Bradford Bulls. But he scored no tries for England in his five appearances in the 2008 Six Nations and was never picked again. Next England turned to the 6ft 7ins and 18 stone Matt Banahan, who was capped 16 times between 2009 and 2011.

Perhaps ‘Lomu-mania’ peaked in 2015 (tragically the year the Great Man died aged 40). In that year’s Six Nations one of the smallest wingers on show was Liam Williams of Wales, a modest 6ft 2ins and 13st 3lbs.

He was dwarfed by his fellow Welsh wings, the 6ft 6in Alex Cuthbert and the 6ft 4in George North, who between them weighed 35 stone.

Then there was the Scottish pair of Tim Visser (6ft 3 and 17 stone) and Sean Lamont (6ft 2 and 16 ½ stone), and the Italian Giovanbattista Venditti, who weighed more than 17 stones. The Irish duo of Tommy Bowe and Simon Zebo were 6ft 2 and 15 ½ stone, as were the French wingers Yoann Huget and Noa Nakaitaci.

England’s Jonny May and Anthony Watson were relatively slender in comparison, the former measuring 6ft 1 and 14 stone and Watson tipping the scales at 14st 7.

During the 2015 Six Nations the most famous ‘little ‘un’, Shane Williams of Wales, gave an interview to an Irish newspaper in which he expressed his fear for the future of wingers. ‘I’ve seen a massive change in size since I finished,’ said Williams.

Being 5ft 8ins and weighing 12 ½ stone hadn’t stopped Williams scoring 58 tries for Wales in 87 Tests between 2000 and 2011 (eleven more than North in his 121 Tests) but he was worried that there was no longer a place for wingers his size in Test rugby.

The Springbok selectors opened their minds and realised Kolbe was right: Size doesn’t matter. His form for Toulouse led to his first South Africa cap in September 2018 and ever since Kolbe has been blazing a very rapid trail for pint-sized pacemen.

Then along came Cheslin Kolbe. I recall interviewing the South African in October 2017, shortly after he had arrived in Toulouse. We talked about his dimensions – the same as Williams – and he told me: ‘I think it has counted against me. The Springbok selectors look for players who are much bigger, but it motivates me to prove myself. I don’t believe size matters. Every player has two arms and two legs and, sure, most players are heavier than me and I’m going to get bounced sometimes. But 120kg players also get bounced; it’s just when it happens to us small guys that people make a big thing of it.’

Eight years later and Kolbe is regarded as one of the greatest players of his generation, a double World Cup winner who has scored 18 tries in 39 Tests. In RugbyPass’s recent Top 100 Players list, he came in second, behind Antoine Dupont.

So what happened? The Springbok selectors opened their minds and realised Kolbe was right: Size doesn’t matter. His form for Toulouse led to his first South Africa cap in September 2018 and ever since Kolbe has been blazing a very rapid trail for pint-sized pacemen. Kurt-Lee Arendse followed soon after and the Boks added another dimension to their fabled supersized power.

Nowhere more so than in the Six Nations, where memories are now distant of the 2015 tournament when behemoths lurked on the wings. In the first round of this year’s competition, there were several wingers who are all under 6ft and weigh less than 13 ½ stone: Louis Bielle-Biarrey of France, England’s Cadan Murley, Italy’s Ange Capuozzo and Simone Gesi, and Darcy Graham of Scotland.

The latter lit up Scotland’s tentative win against Italy. As the Daily Telegraph headline put it: ‘Darcy Graham’s lightning feet bamboozle Italy at perfect time’.

That’s what small wingers do – they bamboozle, not a word that could be applied to one of those 6ft 6ins and 18-stone wingers. They bulldoze.

But most rugby fans prefer the bamboozling winger to the bulldozing winger; like a curling free-kick into the back of the net or a fast bowler cartwheeling a middle stump out of the ground, a burst of electrifying pace down the wing always has the punters out of their seats. It’s a thrill.

So welcome back to the little fellas; we’ve missed you and your bamboozling feet. Big isn’t always better.