Exeter’s Christ Tshiunza: ‘Sport doesn’t have a language. It helped me connect

Up on Christ Tshiunza’s bedroom wall, discreetly hidden away from prying eyes, is a list. One of the best prospects in world rugby has always written down his long-term goals but what separates him from his peers is how many he has already ticked off. “It brings me great joy that I’ve achieved everything I’ve wanted to achieve so far,” he murmurs. “Not a lot of people my age can say that.”

A full cap for Wales while still in his teens, a professional contract with one of England’s premier clubs and – his final exams at Exeter University permitting – a degree in sports science would be an impressive haul on its own. None of it, though, is remotely as uplifting as his remarkable journey to this point, an odyssey to give soaring hope to anyone growing up beyond rugby’s traditional margins.

It is a minor miracle the Kinshasa-born Tshiunza is even a rugby player, let alone a vital presence in an Exeter squad who flew into South Africa on Monday on his 21st birthday. A very different life beckoned when he was growing up in the Democratic Republic of Congo, until his French-speaking family fled the country’s civil war in 2010 and began a new chapter in Cardiff.

Initially they were wedged into a one-bedroom flat in Splott. The seven-year-old Christ, the youngest of five children, slept on a mattress he shared with two of his four sisters. “We were in and out of council houses and no one could speak English so that was tough. But then we met a nice Algerian family who spoke English and French and helped us out. People understood life at home wasn’t easy … everyone in Wales was so nice.”

Life was similarly challenging when he started school. “You’re sat in class without a clue what’s going on. At playtime you can’t really speak and make friends. So you find the only thing that doesn’t have a language. I never had any brothers so sport was a way of connecting with other people. As soon as I started running around I knew I was going to do some form of sport. I was tall and moving faster than a lot of people. I knew I was different in a way.”

Rugby, though, mostly remained a foreign concept even when he first attended Whitchurch high school, alma mater of Gareth Bale, Sam Warburton and the Tour de France champion Geraint Thomas. At 15, though, Tshiunza had a sizeable growth spurt. The school’s director of rugby, Steve Williams, urged him to give the sport a go and the coaches helped to raise sufficient funds to send him on a school tour to South Africa. There were three fixtures and the gangly Tshiunza was man of the match in two of them. “Doors just started opening after that. You get to a point where you think: ‘I’ve got something here. I could use it or I could be an idiot and not fulfil it.’”

Just four years later, in November 2021, he was making his debut for Wales against Fiji…