Ellis Park, Johannesburg, on 24 June 1995 was the setting for the most momentous rugby union match of all time: the World Cup final between South Africa and the overwhelming favourites, New Zealand. The South African president, Nelson Mandela, being introduced to the Springboks wing James Small before the match, could not resist the obvious joke. “You have got a big job today, Mr Small.” For there, down the line, was Small’s opposite number, the gigantic All Blacks wing Jonah Lomu, who during the previous month had made larger men than the modestly proportioned Mr Small quiver.

Lomu was a wing, but he was 6ft 4in tall and 19st, the size of a lock forward, and a week earlier he had reduced Will Carling’s England side to rubble in a semi-final win in Cape Town. New Zealand had beaten England 45-29 and Lomu, barely 20 years old, had scored four tries. Lomu, who has died aged 40, caused a sensation in 1995. Rugby followers could not believe such a large man, little more than a teenager, could be so quick on his feet.

Joel Stransky’s drop-goal in extra time won the 1995 final for Francois Pienaar’s Springboks, the Rainbow Nation propelled to victory on a wave of emotion which the new president cleverly judged would help unify the new South Africa. But the 1995 All Blacks were one of the most highly rated and glamorous sides and four years later in England were similarly expected to lift the Webb Ellis Cup. Instead, and again against all the odds, they were beaten in a Twickenham semi-final against France, who won 43-31 with a second-half comeback after Lomu had scored two tries, reducing the French defence to so much dead wood in an autumn gale. So Lomu is best remembered for two rare games the All Blacks lost, both in extraordinary circumstances.

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Lomu went on to win 63 caps for the All Blacks and score 37 tries. He played little more than 200 first-class games but his rugby career was cut short not by injury but by nephrotic syndrome, a rare kidney complaint that meant that his playing days were effectively over before the next World Cup in Australia in 2003. By the time that Jonny Wilkinson had taken over from Lomu as arguably the best known face in world rugby, the All Black was undergoing dialysis five times a week.

Lomu had a kidney transplant in July 2004, and less than a year later he made a comeback of sorts with a try in a testimonial for Martin Johnson at Twickenham. But Lomu injured his shoulder in the game and needed surgery, aborting a comeback with North Harbour, where he coached. Still a big draw, he then had a brief spell with Cardiff Blues. He scored his first try for the Blues in a man-of-the-match performance on 27 December 2006, but the following April broke his ankle playing against the Scottish franchise Border Reivers. There was a spell back in New Zealand with North Harbour and in France with the Marseille Vitrolles club, but Lomu’s old power was gone.

His death, reportedly from a heart attack, came as a particular shock since he seemed in good health on his visit to the UK for the Rugby World Cup this autumn.

Lomu’s early years were unpromising. He was born in Greenlane, Auckland, the first child of Semesi and Hepi Lomu and named Jonah by his Methodist aunt Ruby. But after the birth of his brother John a year later, Jonah was given to his mother’s older sister, Longo, and taken to the Ha’aipai Islands in Tonga. For the next six years, Longo and her husband brought up the boy before he was taken back to New Zealand by his parents.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jonah Lomu performing the Haka before kick-off at Twickenham, 1999 Photograph: Colorsport/Rex Shutterstock

Young Jonah’s problem was that he could not speak a word of English. His father, a mechanic, was a heavy drinker who subjected his son to regular beatings. Lomu grew up on the streets of south Auckland, surrounded by violence. When he was 12, his uncle David Fuko was hacked to death by a gang of Samoans. By the time he was a teenager, the young Lomu was known to police and at the age of 15 his father threw him out of the family home after a furious row.

The one thing keeping Lomu’s life together was sport. He was an exceptional athlete – as a schoolboy he ran 100m in 10.8sec – and at his school, Wesley college, he was introduced to rugby union. The deputy head of the school, Chris Grinter, had coached New Zealand’s Secondary Schools side and saw that rugby could be a way to channel his young pupil’s anger and aggression.

By the age of 14 Jonah was in the school’s first XV. Another father figure then emerged in Phil Kingsley Jones, a coach in charge of rugby development for the Counties Manukau Rugby Union. The Welshman took Lomu under his wing and by 1991 Jonah was playing for New Zealand’s Under-17 side. In his last year at school, Lomu captained the first XV and played for New Zealand Secondary Schools alongside the future All Blacks stars Christian Cullen and Carlos Spencer.

Playing sevens for the Counties side, the teenager soon attracted the attention of the All Blacks selectors. Laurie Mains, then the All Blacks coach, recalled that Lomu, only a month past his 19th birthday and with only four first-class games behind him, was selected to play in two Tests against the touring French side in June and July 1994. The All Blacks were beaten in Christchurch and Auckland and Mains, who knew Lomu had enormous potential for the following year’s World Cup, dropped the teenager, who by then had moved from the pack to the wing.

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Kingsley Jones had become Lomu’s manager, an important figure in holding his young charge’s life together. Lomu was shattered by his experience of being dropped after the French Tests. These were the dying days of amateurism in rugby union and an offer from the Canterbury Bulldogs rugby league team was tempting. But the 1995 World Cup changed Lomu’s life for ever and made him rugby union’s most bankable star.

As rugby union dropped its pretence that it was an amateur sport in the month that followed the 1995 World Cup final, Lomu became the newly professionalised game’s first celebrity. This had its perils. In March 1996, when he married his South African girlfriend, Tanya Rutter, on the banks of Manukau Harbour, the media focused on the pair’s decision not to invite their parents. Lomu was caught speeding at the wheel of a Jaguar XJS when he had no licence. It was tame stuff compared to what he might have been involved in had rugby not been his salvation, but he seemed ill at ease with the trappings of celebrity.

The World Cups of 1995 and 1999 were the events that really demonstrated Lomu’s talents. He scored eight tries in the 1999 tournament in England and Wales, including one against England, for whom he was proving to be a nemesis, and there were other highlights including the late winning try in 2000 against Australia in an epic Tri-Nations encounter in Sydney before a crowd of 109,874, the largest ever for a rugby union game.

Lomu and Rutter divorced in 2000. He married Fiona Taylor, who became his manager, in 2003. They divorced in 2008. Lomu is survived by his third wife, Nadene (nee Quirk) and their two sons, Braylee and Dhyreille.

Like Wilkinson, the other worldwide star of the game in its professional era, Lomu was a modest, almost shy, man. Only on the rugby pitch was this quiet man a big noise.

• Jonah Tali Lomu, rugby union player, born 12 May 1975; died 18 November 2015