The yellowing bruise that decorates Lewis Moody's left cheekbone is not just the badge of his trade but a souvenir of the two recent Saturday afternoons in which the young Leicester forward became a fully fledged member of Clive Woodward's England XV.
The good opinion of his coaches is beyond doubt. On the eve of last Saturday's game against Australia someone asked Andy Robinson, Woodward's shrewd lieutenant, whether he thought Moody was going to be a top Test player. The response was terse: "What do you mean, 'going to be'?"
Blond flankers seem to have more fun - think of Jean-Pierre Rives or John Jeffrey - and the 24-year-old Moody has a similar gift for drawing attention to himself. Against New Zealand two weeks ago he embellished his all-round display with a smartly taken try which restored England's lead on the stroke of half-time. Last Saturday he played a full part in the comeback against the Wallabies.
And so, when he takes the field against South Africa this afternoon, he will have achieved the considerable feat of forcing Neil Back and Lawrence Dallaglio, two former England captains with a century of caps between them, to spend the autumn international series fighting over a single back-row berth.
"The first game was more exciting in a way," Moody said this week, "not in terms of the rugby or the result but because it was New Zealand and my first major game at Twickenham. I remember running out on to the pitch - you'd got the smoke from the fireworks and the music playing - and standing there watching the haka while the whole stadium was singing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot was brilliant. It was absolutely what I'd expected.
"The Australia game was great as well but for different reasons - the way we came back in the second half and won by a point. When we were struggling in the second half and needing points with a few minutes to go, it felt to me like a Leicester match. I always feel at Leicester that we can do it and I felt the same last Saturday."
Today's confrontation will be a different experience altogether, as Moody knows from last season, when he came on as a replacement in the 29-9 home victory over the Springboks.
"All I remember is the physicality of it and I'm sure it will be exactly the same this weekend. That's the way they approach the game, with the emphasis on big hits and running hard. In the past couple of years they've gone away from it a bit, with a back row who're more ball-carriers and ball-handlers, but I think some of the guys they've picked for this weekend enjoy the tough stuff.
"We've been looking at clips from their last two games and it's fairly obvious how they're going to come at us: bloody hard. They'll want to take it up the middle and hurt us. We have to stand up to that challenge, be focused on how we want to play and make sure we do the dominating. Once you've done the hard work the running rugby can come. But it won't happen until you've done the graft."
Moody has been relishing the physical side of the game since, at the age of five, he and a friend were taken to a mini-rugby session in Bracknell, their home town. "That gave me my enthusiasm for the game. It was full contact for five-year-olds then. Straight into it. BOSH. Brilliant. I loved it."
At Oakham School he switched from centre to No8, played his first game at flanker for England Schools, and in 1996, three months after his 18th birthday, broke Martin Johnson's record for the youngest Leicester player to make a league debut.
The back row against Orrell that day was completed by Dean Richards and John Wells, now the Tigers' director of rugby and coach, respectively. It took Moody five years, however, to establish himself in a team that could also call upon the talents of Back and, more recently, Josh Kronfeld. The experience called upon unexpected reserves of patience.
"When I first arrived I was 18 and Backy was 28, which seemed ancient. Not knowing Backy that well at the time, not realising his fitness and dedication, I wasn't bothered because I thought he only had a couple of years left. And it's hard at Leicester. If you get a knock and you're out for a week, someone else can come in and play as well as you and then there's no reason to drop them. I played a lot of games but not consistently."
The arrival of Bob Dwyer helped him to move forward. "He thought that having two No7s on the pitch was better than one. That was great for me, because he gave me a lot of chances when he was at the club and that carried on when Deano and Wellsy took over. Perhaps not for the first couple of years but once I really got playing some good rugby."
In 1998 he went on England's ill-fated southern hemisphere tour but he had to wait for his real chance until the trip to North America two summers ago. Picked as third-choice open-side, he was selected for all three Tests against Canada and the United States.
He recalled: "As soon as I got the chance, it went from good to better and great. I hadn't even expected to get capped on that tour, so to get the chance in the first Test match was brilliant.
"Ellery Hanley, who was the defensive coach at the time, told me something that's been in the back of my mind ever since. 'Once you get that shirt,' he said, 'make sure no one can take it off you.'"
He is the "young lad" among England's four leading contenders for the current back-row positions but, when he was given the nod over Back for the All Blacks game, his fellow Tiger was the first to congratulate him. Already he is being seen as a potential star of the World Cup side, although his own focus is on tasks closer to hand.
"It's so hard even to contemplate that at the moment," he said. "We've had these three massive internationals and then I've got to go back to Leicester and win my place back. Josh has given three man-of-the-match performances and scored three tries in the last three weeks, so Backy and me are going to have our work cut out, never mind contemplating the Six Nations or the World Cup. You can't think about even thinking about it, because there's so much rugby to be played before then."
