SMOSH West Lakes Football Club remembers Rodney “John Boy” Moody

A LOYAL gentleman with a tireless devotion to SMOSH West Lakes Football Club. That is how friends have remembered Rodney “John Boy” Moody, who passed away last month.

A LOYAL gentleman with a tireless devotion to SMOSH West Lakes Football Club.

That is how friends have remembered one of the Lions’ favourite sons Rodney “John Boy” Moody.

Moody died from prostate cancer on April 9. He was 61.

Originally from Mallala, Moody joined Semaphore Park Football Club as a ruckman in 1974.

Not long after that he acquired his nickname, a reference to a character in the TV show The Waltons, and it stuck, so much so few people knew of him as Rodney.

Four decades on, he remained at the club – which became SMOSH West Lakes after a merger in 1996 – as football director.

Former SMOSH West Lakes Sports Club chair and long-time friend Geoff Cutler said Moody’s dedication to the Lions was unrivalled.

“He always said that if clubs didn’t get volunteers, they wouldn’t exist any more, so he thought it was his active duty to give back,” Cutler said.

“You can’t replace him.

“We’ve got half a dozen trying to at the moment and we’re still not covering some of the things he did.”

Moody played 227 games for the club, including a smattering in the A grade.

“He gave his all in every game he played,” said Cutler, Moody’s first captain.

After hanging up the boots in 1988, Moody held roles as treasurer, secretary, football director, league delegate, guernsey launderer and “self-appointed caretaker of the oval”.

Cutler said Moody would regularly water the oval with a beer in hand and joked that he knew every blade of grass by name.

A spare parts interpreter, Moody only held two jobs in Adelaide and lived in one house – at Exeter.

His loyalty extended beyond the football club, friends and his work.

“The story I always tell is that he used to have a pizza on Thursday nights and the guy shifted, but he didn’t shift anywhere near John lived,” Cutler said.

“But John still went all that way to get a pizza because the guy had always looked after him.”

West Lakes made Moody a life member in 1986 and the combined club did the same more than a decade later.

In 2009, the Lions named the scoreboard after him.

Moody stayed single his entire life, leading some people to suggest he was married to the football club.

“I think he found friendship at the club and just loved it. He was very sincere, very loyal and his heart and soul was in the club,” long-time friend and former Lions volunteer Annette Medlin said.

If he was not at the club, Moody was scuba diving or fishing. He would take his dinghy to Ardrossan or Semaphore, as well as make annual trips to Bali. More than 350 people attended Moody’s funeral at the football club.