The ACT Brumbies thought they had the plan to beat Jonah Lomu – a tactic devised to stop him running over the top of defenders and leaving a path of destruction.
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Before every Super Rugby match they had against the rampaging beast from across the ditch, they tried to kill him with kindness in the hope his thundering thighs wouldn't fire in Canberra.
George Gregan's edict to the team was simple: give Lomu nothing but praise. If players were asked about Lomu, they simply said: "He's the best winger in the world and the greatest of all time."
Rod Kafer towed the line. But he and the Brumbies should have known you can't stop a runaway train, and Kafer found out the hard way you don't mess with the Lomu bull.
Kafer made the mistake of hitting Lomu with "the best tackle of my career" in a trial match at Duntroon in 1999.
So when the Waikato Chiefs came to Canberra a few months later for the serious stuff, Lomu had only one man on his mind.
The result? Kafer went flying backwards seven metres as Lomu charged up the middle of the field, making a bee-line for the stocky Brumbies inside centre and leading the Chiefs to a three-point victory.
"We played the Chiefs at RMC Oval in a trial, I'd had a shoulder reconstruction in the off-season. I put this really good shot on Jonah. I describe it as my best-ever tackle in rugby," Kafer said.
"I hit him with everything I had, as sweet as you can imagine. I remember being over the top of him, looking down and there was some eye to eye contact because I smashed him.
"But I had this sensation that it was like the Terminator when Arnold Schwarzenegger scans your face so he can remember you.
"Sure enough, 12 weeks later we played them late in the season at Canberra Stadium. Lomu never came off his wing. But this time he was dead-set pushing off the picket fence at Canberra Stadium, coming a million miles an hour straight at me.
"I tried to open up the gap on my inside to open a hole that he could run at Stevie Larkham. But as I did that, he changed direction and came straight at me. I got a pretty good shot on him ... I went cannoning backwards. Then he did it a second time later in the match. It was the second time the Brumbies had ever lost at home. I had my best and worst moments in rugby against Jonah."
Lomu died unexpectedly on Wednesday from cardiac arrest related to his kidney condition.
It sparked a worldwide outpouring of emotion and tributes reserved for only the greatest and most respected figures in sport.
The Irish Examiner's touching front-page – New Zealand's silver fern logo with a single leaf falling away – showed how Lomu broke down barriers and perfectly captured the emotion of the moment.
Everyone has a Lomu memory. For most of us it's sitting in the stands or on the couch watching his brutal and magic runs that left defenders writhing in pain.
For Stephen Larkham it was Bledisloe Cup games and a desperate attempt to stop Lomu's match-winning try in what has been dubbed the "greatest game of rugby ever played".
The best part is that you didn't have to be on the field staring Lomu down to know that you were watching one of the greatest of all time.
You might have been simply playing the "Jonah Lomu Rugby" console game, released in 1997, and finding the cheat codes to pick an entire team of Jonahs to run over opponents.
Wallabies duo Matt Giteau and Drew Mitchell sent a message out on Twitter during the World Cup when they arrived in London, asking fans if they knew where they could score a copy of Lomu's game.
Mitchell was shocked when his Twitter account blew up with offers of the game and Playstation consoles almost 20 years after its release.
Lomu was a superstar. He was rugby's first superstar. Even after kidney disease struck him down in his prime, he's still regarded as one of the greatest of all time.
Any powerful winger is immediately compared to Lomu and his World Cup try-scoring record still stands equal with South Africa's Bryan Habana.
Imagine how good he would have been if his career hadn't been cut short.
Only a handful of athletes can capture the world's imagination and attention like Lomu did. He was a superhero in New Zealand and around the rugby world.
Most Brumbies remember Lomu as the rampaging man they tried to tame with compliment after compliment. It worked to a degree, with Lomu never really setting Canberra Stadium alight.
Larkham's moment came in front of 110,000 fans at the Olympic Stadium in Sydney, with the Wallabies leading the All Blacks 35-34 deep into injury time in the second half.
"It was typical of Jonah – you size him up and know it's going to be difficult and more often than not come off worse," Larkham said.
"He was about 120 kilograms and I was about 90 kilos. That was the beauty of Jonah, he had the size and pace as well. I remember him running over Kafe.
"I thought I had him, I genuinely thought I did. But it was a bit of acceleration and I was gone. Jonah changed the world for rugby. A once in a life-time player."
Kafer said: "Any team that had Jonah in it, we [the Brumbies] just flooded Jonah with compliments. You never wanted to poke the bear.
"Our only strategy was to talk Jonah up, say how scared we were and that he's the greatest of all time.
"When he was playing for Wellington against NSW, Scott Staniforth had been compared in the press to the Australian version of Jonah Lomu.
"Jonah ran on the field and in the first five minutes, he KO'd Staniforth and then scored two tries and spear-tackled Nathan Grey. The trick was compliments, because the last thing you wanted to do was fire him up.
"The third game of 1996 he played for Auckland, we beat them 43-17. He didn't do much damage against the Brumbies, I was like his bunny."
