EVERY day now brings news about this autumn's Rugby World Cup, and yesterday Vern Cotter divulged the names in his 46-strong extended Scotland squad for the tournament.

But, while such announcements help increase the sense of anticipation about the competition, we will be lucky if the 2015 version is even half as dramatic as the one that turned the sport upside down 20 years ago. As for the players, any one of them - even whoever turns out to be the most valuable member of the winning team - is unlikely to make a fraction of the impact of the man who took that tournament by storm, Jonah Lomu.

With due respect to the joy felt by supporters of the four countries who have lifted the Webb Ellis Cup - South Africa in 1995, New Zealand and Australia both before and after, and England in 2003 - nothing in any of the six other stagings of the competition has come close to the drama enacted 20 years ago. And remember, the All Blacks did not even win the cup that year, going down to the Springboks, and with a touch of food poisoning, in the final.

By then, however, Lomu had left an indelible mark not only on the tournament, but on rugby history. Indeed, there is a strong case for saying that the Rugby World Cup of 1995 was the most important event in the history of the sport since the advent of international matches well over a century earlier.

Look back at the highlights of matches from before that watershed year and, while you may still marvel at the talents on show, you will also surely be struck by the size of the participants. The forwards carried a bit of beef, but the backs were frail and stick-like players by today's standards. They were good at running away from each other; not so effective when it came to the more direct approach.

Lomu changed all that. A man of his height and bulk would normally be expected to plod along in the pack, but he had the speed to go with the stature, and so became a winger.

Not that he always needed to use that speed. Take one of his most famous tries, the first of four against England in that year's semi-final.

When the 20-year-old phenomenon gathered the ball, he was neither motoring at full speed nor even heading in the right direction. Instead, he had to run towards the left touchline to collect a wayward pass from Graeme Bachop, and only then managed to generate some forward momentum. But it was good enough to propel him past Tony Underwood and Will Carling, and then, unforgettably, to plough straight through the hapless Mike Catt before touching down.

This was rugby as we had never seen it before, and it was also rugby that prompted Rupert Murdoch to dig into his pocket more deeply than he had ever done before. Some of the leading unions had been edging towards professionalism in the years preceding the tournament, while others, Scotland among them, clung on to amateur values. Then, during the competition, Murdoch's News Corporation offered a $550m, 10-year deal to the big three Southern Hemisphere countries. The deal was announced on the eve of the final; the professional era was about to begin.

There were some other prodigious talents in that All Blacks side, of course. Josh Kronfeld, for example, took the predatory arts of the openside flanker to new heights, while No.8 Zinzan Brooke's drop goal - again, against England - added cavalier insult to the injury already inflicted by Lomu.

But the big winger was head and shoulders above them all. He trampled over opposing defences as easily as Mediterranean peasants tread grapes, and his destructive power brought rugby to the attention of millions who had never before realised it could be quite so entertaining or explosive.

He was back in black at the 1999 World Cup, scoring in each of his team's matches, but thereafter a chronic kidney condition began to take its toll. First diagnosed in late 1995, it eventually led to his needing a kidney transplant; today, his health still requires careful monitoring. He was able to make several comebacks after first being laid low by the illness, but was never again the force he had been for those few glorious weeks in the summer of 1995.

And if we're being honest about it, rugby itself has never again made the impact on the wider world that it made then. The circumstances of that World Cup also played a part in that impact - multi-party elections had been held the year before in South Africa, and Nelson Mandela was there to present the cup to the home team - but Lomu was the man who revolutionised the sport.

He turned 40 last month, and his greatest games are half a lifetime away. Yet every time the phrase 'Rugby World Cup' is heard, some of us will recall those halcyon days of 1995. Recall them, and dream that some day in the future - almost certainly not this year, and perhaps not for a long time, but some day - we will again witness something akin to the brutal beauty of Jonah in full flight.