All Black winger Jonah Lomu (right) is taking an insurance company to court with a sickness claim after he was sidelined by a kidney disease which kept him out of rugby for what would have been a lucrative year. The colossus is suing his insurance company for failing to accept his health insurance claim. Australian company GIO Insurance refused to settle when Lomu claimed for the time he was off rugby because of nephrotic syndrome, a chronic kidney disease which required prolonged treatment.

Neither side is revealing how much Lomu has claimed. But with classic understatement, his lawyer Paul Dale said: "Jonah is not a cheap rugby player."