SA's Super Rugby departure a huge loss for New Zealand, says All Blacks icon Spencer

NESTLED at the foot of Table Mountain lies the Green Point Track, home of Schotsche Kloof Walmers RFC, a significant venue not only in the realm of rugby but as a bastion for nonracial sport in South Africa.

- ZAAHIER ADAMS

This historic ground has witnessed legends, most notably Fagmie "Fluffy" Solomons, whose skills electrified the pitch during the politically charged 1980s when rugby transcended mere sport to become a symbolic platform for change.

Solomons, a flyhalf characterised by his vision and creativity, was a beacon for a generation that could only dream of watching their hero parade his skills with the likes of the Du Plessis brothers and Rob Louw in the Currie Cup down at Boundary Road in Newlands.

Our generation was deprived of witnessing Solomons in his prime, which forced us to look elsewhere for heroes even as Apartheid succumbed to a new era in the early 1990s.

This period ushered in the unification of the game, professionalism, and ultimately the inception of Super Rugby halfway through the decade.

Despite the early morning starts Down Under, everyone would rise often before the sun had, for there was one figure from Down Under who captured the imagination of fans worldwide: Carlos Spencer.

The proud Maori, doubled-down with the ink emblazoned on his chiseled-perfect chest, lit up the screens with all his creativity and X-factor that revolutionised the game and transformed the Auckland Blues into a domestic superpower.

He was everything current Storm-ers and Springbok flyhalf Sacha Fein-berg-Mngomezulu is and more, with the pass between the legs, double pump passes, knee kicks, reverse and behind-the-back passes and, of course, the banana kick.