The Springboks were awesomely good on Friday night but Canan Moodie’s story is something else again. Just 20, the exciting youngster from the Cape grew up two doors down from a drug den and had to walk up to 15km simply to attend training sessions. No wonder his eyes sparkle as he reflects on his remarkable journey from the edge of nowhere to trouncing the All Blacks at Twickenham.
If the athletic, charming Moodie looks and sounds like a ready-made superstar direct from central casting the truth is starkly different. Growing up in a poverty-stricken area called Amstelhof near Paarl, he learned to play rugby out in the road in a neighbourhood where gang violence was rife.
“We all have different backgrounds but mine was gangsterism, drugs,” Moodie said, still caught up in the afterglow of South Africa’s 35-7 victory. “Two houses away from me was a drug house. When I go home now, things are still there. It wasn’t the greatest of environments to grow up in. Playing touch rugby on the grass or in the road was our way of staying busy and keeping away from that.”
Along with his hard-working parents it was his brother, Keanu, a talented long jumper, who inspired him to follow a different route and pursue his dreams. “He walked 10-15km to go to training because he didn’t have any transport. Seeing him walking down the track to go training motivated me.
“Once I got a bit older and realised that rugby might be work for me I started joining him. It was tough but when you come from a tough environment you play the cards that you’re dealt.”
Slowly but surely, the evasion skills and spatial awareness honed in those back street games is paying dividends. Having struggled to make his school A team as a kid, he is now fast emerging as a player who could illuminate next month’s World Cup. South Africa’s multiheaded hydra of a pack feasted greedily on their All Black counterparts but the casual brilliance of Moodie, the second youngest player ever to be capped by the Springboks, was almost as striking.
A supernatural first-half offload and two mesmeric sidesteps for a “try”, until it was disallowed for an earlier offence, were merely the most obvious examples of the young centre’s blooming talent. “Most of us get our skills in the streets growing up,” said Moodie.
“You learn the natural ability to beat guys in small spaces. We play in a road that’s probably five metres wide with a bunch of guys. You learn how to try and beat them from a young age.”
In those early days, too, when local friends and family came together to watch Springbok games on television, Moodie remembers rushing outside and visualising how it might one day feel if he ever wore the famous green jersey.
“At half-time we’d go out into the road and I’d imagine myself in this position. I’d be running in the road alone, kicking a ball, scoring the match-winning try.”
Listening to him, you are reminded once again that South Africa have never been just another rugby team. The ties that bind the Springboks to the communities they represent can be uniquely powerful and, with the great Siya Kolisi at the helm, there is no danger of them forgetting where they came from or failing to refocus after epic displays such as Friday’s All Black annihilation.
As with Kolisi, Makazole Mapimpi and Cheslin Kolbe before him, Moodie also wants to make all those hard teenage yards seriously worthwhile. Helping his country secure a second successive World Cup would make his own sweat-stained fairytale even sweeter.
“This is what I dreamed of years ago, so to be here is very special.
“If you’d told me a few years ago I’d be playing against the All Blacks at a packed Twickenham I’d have laughed in your face. It makes all of it worth it.”
Rugby union unquestionably has a shimmering new star.
