The real bruises were more mental than physical, and Will Carling looked stunned in the aftermath. Ashen as he reflected on his England side’s 45-29 demolition by Jonah Lomu’s All Blacks in the semi-final of the 1995 World Cup, Carling struggled to articulate his feeling about the man-mountain New Zealander who had just contributed four tries to the humiliation. “He is a freak,” the bewildered Carling mumbled. “The sooner he goes away the better.”

Eleven years stretches the definition of “sooner” but it seems that Carling’s wish might finally have come true. Having given up on his dream of returning to the All Blacks colours he last wore four years ago, the 63-times capped Lomu announced last week that he had opened negotiations with new Australian rugby league franchise the Gold Coast Titans, with a view to joining the side next year.

Reports from the Antipodes gushed about Lomu being back in the physical condition that made him such an unstoppable force when he burst on to the scene as rugby’s first true superstar all those years ago. For those of us who remembered the rather lardy figure who wheezed through a handful of games for Cardiff last season, it was astonishing to read that Lomu, now 31, had been running close to 11sec 100m times and that he would be a shoo-in for the New Zealand rugby league side if he decided to cross over to the 13-man code.

But as the story was fleshed out, an expression that seems particularly pertinent to Lomu, suspicions began to arise. For a start, Lomu’s recovery from the shambling figure who played for Cardiff, and who subsequently struggled even to win selection for the North Harbour side in the New Zealand Provincial Championship, seemed truly Lazarus-like, not least after all five New Zealand Super 14 sides had also decided they could forgo his services in next year’s competition.

And then there was the reaction of Nathan Gibbs, the former doctor of the Australian international rugby league side, who expressed horror that a player whose long battle against the debilitating kidney condition Nephrotic Syndrome led to a transplant two years ago should consider returning to a sport as physically demanding as rugby league.

“You would have to be very wary, medically, to let a player play given he’s had a transplant,” said Gibbs, formerly a top player himself. “I would advise that anyone who has had this surgery, and wants to play football, should have heavy counselling against such a move. It would be madness.”

In which light, even the most charitable conspiracy theorist might suspect that the Titans’ parading of Lomu last week had more to do with boosting their commercial efforts than giving them an edge on the pitch. While the club’s officials gave the former All Black a whistle-stop helicopter tour of the Gold Coast, images of which filled the back pages of Australian newspapers the following day, it may not have been a complete coincidence that they were also launching their season ticket campaign for a side who have not held a training session yet, far less played an actual game.

Hopefully, Lomu will have been well rewarded for his troubles, but what do others get from the deal? It beggars belief that anyone could be persuaded to buy a ticket on the off-chance that Lomu might make the occasional appearance, but the Titans have gone down a well-worn path with their Barnum and Bailey approach to drumming up interest in an as-yet non-existent team. The pity is that the ploy will almost certainly be successful.

After all, when the principle of sporting purity collides with the business of putting bums on seats it almost invariably comes off second best. But if tickling the public fancy with the odd half-baked and highly improbable rumour about a new signing might seem innocuous enough, the practice seems shadier and more sinister still when the men on the purse strings start pulling the puppet strings as well and actually clinch the deals.

In other words, it is not remotely beyond the bounds of possibility that Lomu might turn out for the Titans at some stage, an appearance that would almost certainly amount to nothing more than a gruesome act of self-parody by the former giant by now reduced, quite literally, to making an exhibition of himself. At a stage of his career when he should be heading for the door marked “dignified exit”, the lure of the Aussie dollar may yet persuade him to overstay his welcome once more.

Of course, the two rugby codes have a dismal track record of recruiting each other’s star names for all the worst reasons. In rugby union’s amateur era, the traffic was all towards league, but the professional age has reversed that flow with only occasionally successful results. Of those who arrived in union with no previous experience of the 15-man game, only Jason Robinson has come close to being an unqualified success.

Henry Paul and Iestyn Harris shone briefly and none too brightly for England and Wales respectively, but neither could adapt to the full range of union’s demands and both, sensibly, returned to the league code. In due time, Andy Farrell of Saracens might decide to do likewise, for having been coaxed across to union by an assortment of RFU panjandrums and RFU chequebooks it now emerges (only 18 months later) that no one had actually given any thought to which position he might play.

Which is why we should always be wary of marquee signings. All too often, names that look good in headlines simply fail to deliver the performances their box office billings would lead you to expect. Roy Keane’s arrival at Celtic Park last season was greeted as the return of the prodigal son to his spiritual home, but the injury-plagued player’s contribution was next to negligible and it was hardly the greatest surprise when he promptly nipped off elsewhere.

You think, too, of Liam Botham, hawked around any sport that would have him on the strength of his surname. Then you think of Michael Jordan, a stellar figure in basketball but an embarrassment when he tried to create a second career in baseball. In every sense, he never got past first base.

In which light, it is easy to think of George Foreman as one of the few who got it right. Granted, Foreman exposed the farce that is modern professional boxing when he won a world title fight at the age of 45, but he went on to make more money than ever through sales of his Lean Mean Grilling Machine.

If Lomu really is feeling leaner and meaner these days, he may have more of a future in domestic appliances than idiotic dalliances with rugby league.