Interview with Jonah Lomu Johnny Watterson talks to the All Black legend about his battle against a kidney disorder and his ambitions

Regardless of how the Celtic League stands at the end of the season, Ulster and Munster watchers may want to take the trip down to their local grounds when summer officially begins in May. The Cardiff Blues come to Ravenhill Road on May 5th and then meet Munster in the Irish province's final home league game of the season on the weekend of May 26th.

Cardiff probably don't have the glamour to have fans scrambling into Limerick from the hinterland, but with former All Black Jonah Lomu seeing out the end of the season with the Welsh side before returning to North Harbour for New Zealand's forthcoming NPC season, Cardiff have at least one global attraction to get the stiles moving.

His nomination yesterday for an International Laureus Sports Award comes as no surprise. Named in the "comeback" category along with the likes of tennis star Martina Hingis, who got bored and then returned to the game, and British golfer Colin Montgomerie, who got divorced and then returned to the game, you might say Lomu's rehabilitation, having survived a crippling kidney disorder, nephritic syndrome, followed by a transplant, was a significantly tougher climb back.

The All Black, who moved to the Arms Park on a short-term loan before Christmas, is still under full-time contract with North Harbour and has always aimed for a return to the Auckland Blues Super 14 squad. Now 18 months on from the transplant and getting closer to the end of a long tunnel, Lomu is "where I want to be at this point", but has still some way to go to before fulfilling his ambition of once again playing for New Zealand.

"I lost the feeling in my left leg completely during dialysis, so that's where I was before I got my transplant," said the winger. "It has taken about 18 months to have gotten to where I am now.

"But I have always set high ambitions. I have always wanted to achieve things and even now I'm looking at the All Blacks. Sure that's my ambition. You have to aim that high . . . Right now I'm where I want to be with fitness and rugby. I'm happy with that."

At one of his lowest points Lomu was on a kidney dialysis machine six nights a week for eight hours. He had just married at the time, and did not know whether he would be able to become involved again in sport.

"The way I tell it to everyone was dialyse or die . . . Rugby has helped me now and it helped me then. You spend eight hours on a machine not moving, needles sticking out of your arm. Being a newly-married man I couldn't hold my wife. It becomes a prison. It was like on the rugby field when you are in hard situations, the difference is what is going on upstairs."

One day in the summer of 2004 the then 29-year-old received a phone call. It was from an organ donor, a stranger, who had decided to donate one of his healthy kidneys to Lomu. Had no such call arrived, the barnstorming winger from the 1995 South African World Cup, during which he famously ran through, rather than around, both the English and Irish defences, faced life in a wheelchair.

"Grant rang me up one night and said to me 'I believe you need a new kidney'," says Lomu. "He said 'I've got two, you can have one. I can live with one and you need it. Let's go ahead and do it'. I thought it was the most selfless act anyone could do for another person."

Now heading into the final two months of the season having played in nine games so far, Lomu's famous frame has slimmed down to 117kg. The Blues are fifth in the league table at present and a win this weekend against Edinburgh would see them shift into fourth, setting them up for a possible top-three placing. While Lomu won't play in the match because of the rule of a maximum of two non-national players in a 22-man squad, his fight remains long term, not over one weekend.

"The last few months have been frustrating," he says. "I've been training hard but I've been missing playing rugby during the Six Nations. I'm feeling great, the body's on track and I'm looking forward to getting back into it as the season gets going."

(This week is the Irish Kidney Association's Organ Donor Awareness Week)