“Patience,” Mose Masoe eventually says as he looks at his little garden outside Hull and finds the right word to describe the most valuable lesson he has learned while overcoming paralysis. Masoe is a giant of a man but his stature has nothing to do with his size as a 6ft 3in former rugby league prop who weighed 20st at his peak. His monumental character allows him to reflect on all he has gained, and lost, with clarity rather than self-pity.
Plastic toys are spread around the garden and, after two hours, I don’t see any sadness in the Samoa international. He was a force for Hull Kingston Rovers as co-captain of the Super League club until, on 12 January, he suffered a catastrophic injury in a pre-season game against Wakefield that left him paralysed from the shoulders down. The 31-year-old New Zealander is soon rocking with amusement when his Australian wife, Carrisa, says: “Mose was pretty patient before but not being able to scratch your nose when you’re lying on your back for six weeks takes it to another level.”
The frustrating memories make Masoe smile wryly. “Patience and belief is what you need most,” he says. “There are tough days but you’ve always got to look forward to the better times.”
It’s easier to talk about paralysis when Masoe has already defied predictions. Slowly, dizzyingly, he learned how to sit up and, finally, to stand while holding a walking frame. Seven weeks ago, he took his first steps unaided.
Mose Masoe
(@MoseMasoe)Pinderfields laid the platform 🙏🏽 now my two little home physios are setting the bar 💪🏽. Still a long way to go but forever grateful for what I have. Hope everyone’s well through this lockdown ✌🏽 pic.twitter.com/stRwQymhiN
May 13, 2020
A baby, the couples’ third, and a fourth child and second son for Masoe, is due to be born at home next week. Excitement and hope fizz around them and make an otherwise devastating story so uplifting. It can also be sobering and there are times when Carissa looks down thoughtfully. She knows their battle is far from over.
Masoe remembers the only time he and his wife cried together. “When you can’t feel your legs, you think: ‘Ohhhhh, this is not good,” he says. “They took me off the pitch and put needles in my leg and I couldn’t feel it. That’s when it sank in. They were assessing me in the changing rooms before the ambulance came. I said to Carissa: ‘Can you pinch me?’ She was pinching my thigh and I couldn’t feel anything. We had a little cry together. But, after that, it’s been sweet.”
When their tears fell, splashing together on the concrete floor, did Masoe think he might never walk again? “Yeah,” he murmurs.
In early January Tony Smith, Hull KR’s coach, asked Masoe to become his co-captain. “I said: ‘Look, mate, I’m not a talker.’ Tony said: ‘Just think how, when you speak at training, everyone listens.’ Carissa encouraged me and I went back to Tony and said: ‘I’ll give it a go. Weller Hauraki [his co-captain] can do the talking and I’ll put my foot down. But I’ve never had to be the bad cop with the boys.
“I felt awesome. This year the coaching staff said: ‘Dude, get yourself in shape.’ Every pre-season before I was trying to get skinnier. Normally, they want me to get down to 120kg but this time I was allowed to get up to 130kg. For the first time the coaches said: ‘You know what your body needs.’ I could do weights at last and in the gym I was doing 300kg deadlifts.”
The Wakefield friendly was the first game of the season and after two minutes Masoe missed a tackle “and went over the top. My neck went into a hyper-extension and one ligament snapped in the front and when I landed another snapped at the back. The bones in my neck came together and that bruised swelling pinched my cords and stopped most of the signals from my brain. There was no pain. But, when I opened my eyes, I couldn’t feel my legs. My arm was spasming and I realised I’d done something really bad.”
Carissa had just bought hot dogs for their two young daughters at the game. “They were worrying about the food,” she says, “and I was sorting them out when I felt these eyes looking at me. I looked around and No 10 wasn’t there. Usually, when Mose went down he’d get straight up. But you could tell, just by the way he was lying, he was in trouble.”
At the hospital in Leeds, Masoe says: “A random doctor did the scans. He wasn’t a spinal specialist so he said: ‘They look fine.’” Carrisa says: “I heaved the biggest sigh of relief. But Mose didn’t believe it.”
Masoe shakes his head. “I knew it was serious. Fifteen minutes later, the specialist gave us the worst-case scenario. I needed emergency surgery. He even pushed me to the operating room because no porters were available. He looked quite young. The nurse was bossing him around because she thought he was the porter. He goes: ‘Sorry, mate, I’m the surgeon. I need you to do what I tell you.’ I was cracking up. But I had confidence in him because he’d told me straight: ‘Mate, it doesn’t look good. I need to get in there and release the pressure.’”
Carissa nods. “When he said Mose might not recover [from paralysis] it was quite stressful.” I break the silence by saying this must have been a terrible moment. “In my head,” Masoe says, “I told myself to prove him wrong.”
The combination of a skilled surgeon and a gritty rugby league player produced an incredible outcome. “I came to around 3am,” Masoe says. “At the far side of intensive care they pulled a sheet over someone that had passed away. It was a young girl who got stabbed in the neck. I thought: ‘This poor person’s passed away. I can’t feel sorry for myself.’ Then my wrist moved a flicker. I said: ‘You’ve got a chance here. Make the most of it.’”
Steve Ball, the general manager of the Rugby League Benevolent Fund, arrived the next morning. He sits with us now and says: “I held Mose’s hand and told him: ‘You and I are going to become great friends.’” The Fund has bolstered the family financially and emotionally. Ball helped extend Masoe’s rehab at the world-renowned Pindersfields spinal unit in Wakefield, just when it seemed the Covid crisis might force him out of hospital. Masoe believes the decision to allow him to remain at the unit until 24 April saved his rehabilitation. “Dean, one of their physios, was a massive help and all the staff were incredible.”
So much depended on Masoe’s attitude. Ball brought him a special pair of glasses, with a lens that meant he could see his toes when he was paralysed. “I lay there for hours trying to move my big toe. It took me 48 hours to get a flicker in my knee. I would concentrate on moving the big toe until I fell asleep. Wake up the next morning and do the same thing.”
A flicker of movement must have been one of the most beautiful moments of his life? “It’s like winning the Grand Final [which he did with St Helens in 2014]. The surgeon told me I won’t get any movement. But my knee proved everyone wrong. My fingers and wrist were next. I moved my arms at five weeks. I could feel my toes.
“I met some athletes who had their spinal cord severed. They had no chance. Mine’s still intact. I thought: ‘I have to walk. I’m insulting those that can’t if I don’t.’ Lots of paraplegic guys, in their wheelchairs, made me laugh. This one guy went: ‘Can you feel your arms?’ I said: ‘Yeah.’ Can you feel your stomach? ‘A little.’ Can you feel your legs? ‘Kind of.’ He said: ‘You’re faking it. Get up. You only want to get the blue [disability] badge.’ I couldn’t stop laughing. But I also wanted to be him because he was in a wheelchair. I couldn’t sit up so it was my goal to get where he was. Every day he would annoy the shit out of me. It was so funny.”
Carissa was pregnant and exhausted, looking after the girls, and worried sick about her husband – whom she could not see for seven weeks during lockdown. “I had a few cries to Steve on the phone,” she says.
Ball brought an iPad for Masoe to communicate with his family and, before he returned home, costly purchases were made. “Steve put in a lift at home,” Masoe says. “Because we’ve got two sets of stairs he offered another one. I said: ‘Steve, save the money. I’ll crawl up there.’ Now I can walk up there with a crutch. It took me weeks but I wanted a challenge.”
In mid-May, 16 weeks after he had been paralysed, Masoe took his first steps on his own. Carissa recorded the moment as, on impulse, Masoe thought: “Let’s give it a go. I was so nervous because I didn’t want to squash my little girl. The only thing between me and her was that frame. I was thinking: ‘Don’t fall over!’”
Carissa says: “He’s had a couple of spills, which we know is normal. It frightens the girls but Mose’s so blase there’ve been a few times I’ve been cooking dinner and he’ll talk to me. I’ll turn around and he’s trying to walk himself. He had a fall last weekend.”
Masoe smiles sheepishly. “I was walking in the dark because Carissa let me stay downstairs for the first time after she went to bed. I was watching some guy show. She heard this almighty bang and came rushing downstairs. I fell over in the kitchen – trying to reach the fridge to get some food.”
He laughs before, with typical honesty, detailing some hidden challenges of his situation. “Carissa has to help me with my bowels in the morning. And then, because I can’t urinate, I take this pill. At night it doesn’t work. It’s difficult to do a wee. I feel sorry for Carissa. She has to empty them out in the morning. It’s the biggest battle. Bowels and bladders.”
Carissa says: ‘Most people in hospital said they’d rather get them sorted than walk again. Walking’s maybe No 3 on the list.” Will these problems improve with time? “We don’t know.” Masoe admits. “It’s like everything with this injury. It’s unknown.”
One of the few certainties is that Masoe will never playagain. His love of the game was evident when, while waiting for emergency surgery, he asked Carissa to Google the result of the friendly. “We lost,” he says. “I was gutted. But I didn’t mourn the end of my career. I only had a few more years left but you get to that point in your life where you just appreciate being part of a team. I was there.
“But I’m happy where I am now. I’ve still got lots of rehab but I want to go into the mental side of rugby and help young kids. After all my battles hopefully I can pass on knowledge as a mentor or counsellor. It would be nice to give back that way.”
Masoe lifts himself out of his chair. He stands up and says: “It feels good. Walking still takes a massive effort but I’m getting better.”
There will be even more hope when the baby arrives. “That’s a big silver lining for us,” Carissa says. “We can’t think this is the worst year ever because we’re having a boy.” Masoe nods intently. “I won’t remember 2020 for the neck injury and a tough year. I will remember it for the birth of our son.”
Slowly, patiently, Masoe walks around his garden. The sun steams down and a smile spreads across his face. “It’s an awesome day, isn’t it?” he says quietly.
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