Springbok prop Asenathi Ntlabakanye tells KickOff Rugby how his mother's tough decision to send him to Johannesburg, away from his home in Plettenberg Bay, set him on a path to success and saved him from a different life.

"She forced me to take up the game, and rightly so," Ntlabakanye tells KickOff, reflecting on his mother's profound influence. After his father passed when he was just four, she raised him and his siblings alone, becoming both mother and father.

Ntlabakanye is proud of his Plettenberg Bay community but acknowledges the risks. "The reality is, if you don't find an outlet - like sport - you can end up heading down the wrong path. I was lucky to have her pushing me from day one."

When high school scholarships came knocking, he wanted the "comfortable option" close to home. His mother refused.

"She wasn't having it, though - she made me take the least comfortable route and packed me off to St Stithians in Johannesburg."

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The gamble paid off. When he made the Lions team for Grant Khomo Week, he called his mother to tell her she'd made the right decision. Later, when he was selected for SA Schools, the emotion was even greater.

He decided to call her with the news. "When she answered the phone, I said, 'Mom, we've made it'."

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The 144kg tighthead, who got called up to join the Springboks after Ox Nche was forced out of their outgoing tour with a leg injury, is clear about the debt he owes her.

"My mother really has a special place in my heart," he says. "It can't have been easy for her, and the older I get, the more I understand what she did for us. I wouldn't be where I am today without her."

What he went through in his childhood and at his new school, he says, "made me the man and player I am today."

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