Jonah Lomu

📍Mangere, Auckland, New Zealand

“I grew up in Māngere, South Auckland, in a community that was tough and tight-knit — Pacific Island and Māori families living close together, looking after each other's children, finding dignity in hard circumstances. My father Chester was Tongan and my mother Hepi was Māori, and the two cultures combined in me in ways I spent my whole life trying to understand. I was big from the beginning — big and fast and powerful in a way that made rugby the obvious path. I played for Counties Manukau and then for the All Blacks, and the 1994 tour of France was where the world first saw what I could do. Māngere gave me the physicality and the humility that I tried to carry onto every rugby field. When I ran, I ran for South Auckland.”

Sources: Lomu, J. Jonah: An Autobiography (2004), Hodder Moa; Palenski, R. Rugby: A New Zealand History (2015), Auckland University Press