Lomu could play again

Former All Blacks winger Jonah Lomu has indicated that he wants to play in the 2007 Rugby World Cup in Paris and after receiving a kidney transplant on Tuesday the big speedster has been given approval by doctors to do so. But not everybody agrees.

Lomu has been on the sidelines since 2002 after having been diagnosed with a rare kidney disease, nephritis, and earlier in the year he was struggling to walk on his own.

But since receiving a kidney from an anonymous donor, thought to be a close friend, Lomu could have been given new hope to return to the game that made him famous.

"As a doctor, I am hoping Jonah gets back to full health and can do all the things he wants to do," former All Blacks doctor John Mayhew told the New Zealand Press Association.

"Now, if one of those things is playing rugby...he has discussed it before with the transplant surgeon and was given tacit approval for that."

But Lomu is not out of the woods yet, with a period of recovery still required.

"He's still a bit sore, but is progressing as well as the surgeons could hope," Mayhew said. "He is talking, he is back to his normal self.

"He is not on a ventilator or anything like that. He is moving around, getting out of bed, albeit with difficulty at this stage."

But while Mayhew and Lomu's surgeon are optimistic about the big winger making his return to the game he holds so dear, not everybody believes that it is the best course of action. And to do so could spell danger for Lomu.

"Contact sport of any sort with a transplanted kidney isn't recommended," said Carmel Gregan-Ford, education officer of the New Zealand Kidney Foundation.

"If anybody was going to do it I suppose it would be Jonah.

"But in the renal world, the kidney world, we wouldn't recommend somebody to go back to a contact sport, purely because of the risk of the kidney being damaged, particularly with it being hit or infected."