Tuesday evening, the night before Matt Banahan was named for his first England start at Twickenham, a plane touched down in France carrying another wing of similarly unusual dimensions. Banahan is 6ft 7in and 17½st, Jonah Lomu is 6ft 5in, tops 18st and hopes to make his debut for Marseilles Vitrolles in the French third division in a fortnight’s time.

Lomu is 34 and has not played for two years. This is his second comeback from a kidney disease but he said: “My body feels really good. When I’m running around in training, I can’t get the grin off my face.”

He is also modest about his broader ambitions. “My goals now are purely with Marseilles,” he said.

And taking his rugby to a higher level? “Whatever happens, happens,” he said. “But you never lose the desire to play for your country.”

He is also aware that hopeful comparisons have been made in Britain between Banahan and himself, not only because of size and pace but because they were fished out of the pack and instructed to stretch their legs in the No 11 shirt.

Banahan was seen by Brian Ashton scoring a try in a game of touch rugby when the former England head coach was at the RFU junior national academy; Lomu was a forward playing in the national sevens tournament — being watched by Laurie Mains, the former New Zealand coach — when both his side’s wings went down injured. He moved out wide and scored a hatful of tries.

Lomu has “heard a few big things about this gentleman” and he recalls his own development on the wing. “It is hard when you move,” he said. “Learning positional play and how to work with your centres takes a while.

“You also have to learn, when you are the big winger, not to listen to the hype, to the idea that if you are playing well, you should be scoring tries. Banahan sounds like he has huge talent, but he has to believe that and remember that it is a 15-man game.

“I quickly became heavily marked, and because of that there were times when people were asking, ‘Why aren’t you scoring tries?’ That was hard; that is the bear on your shoulders.

“The point to remember is that if the opposition are throwing more than one person at you, there is a hole being created somewhere else.

“For me, I learnt to understand that if I beat the first person, then cover tacklers would be following and space was already opening up.

“If you take two or three players with you, you might not score the try but you have helped to create space for others. That is why you have to learn to be selfless.”

Lomu also knows that his name and reputation do not exactly help wings, such as Banahan, who are of similar build and are thus invariably dubbed “the next Jonah”.

“Everybody has their own style and no doubt this young gentleman has his own style, too,” he said.