The Breakdown team chat with All Blacks flanker Sam Cane and CEO of NZR Players Association Rob Nichol on the future of the game in NZ
COMMENT: By Charlie Morgan of The Telegraph
I always appreciated how fortunate we were to have Sky Sports at home, chiefly because I had spent a couple of years shamelessly imploring my parents to have it installed.
But the fact that they inadvertently relented in time for the 2004 Super 12 season was the real stroke of luck. Mornings with breakfast cereal and Carlos Spencer, fly-half-turned-TikTok phenomenon, hitch-kicked my love of rugby union on to the next level that year.
The Blues were the intoxicating reigning champions, armed with an absurd fleet of strike-runners in Doug Howlett, Joe Rokocoko, Mils Muliaina, Sam Tuitupou and Rupeni Caucaunibuca. Spencer was their swaggering conductor and did whatever he fancied.
He would float passes, often looking the other way and occasionally out of the back of his hand. He would keep the ball and ghost around defenders. Sometimes, he turned away from would-be tacklers and popped the ball to himself before regathering, arching his back and accelerating through a gap.
Spencer stopped dead every now and then, coaxing opponents closer before bursting into life. And there were banana kicks arcing over scrums and breakdowns into space. More on them later.
Carlos Spencer in action for the Blues in 2003. Photo / Photosport
I distinctly remember Sky playing a montage of Spencer's best bits. One of their pundits, possibly Sean Fitzpatrick or Michael Lynagh but maybe Stuart Barnes, highlighted a try in the famous 38-29 away victory over the Crusaders.
Having scooped up a poor pass from Blues' bitter rivals, whom they had beaten 21-17 in the 2003 final, Spencer goose-stepped and then ran 70 metres to score. In that order.
Laughing, the Sky pundit suggested that celebratory stutter-steps do not usually come on a player's own 22. Looking back, it brings to mind Blades of Glory, a ridiculous ice-skating comedy starring Will Ferrell.
Ferrell's character, lothario Chazz Michael Michaels, shoots fire from his fingers at the end of a riotous performance. His gold-medal rival, Jimmy MacElroy, wonders whether the pyrotechnics were necessary. As roses thrown by enraptured fans land around him on the rink, Michaels responds: "Ask them".
Spencer's breakaway, which put Blues 31-24 ahead, was not even his maddest try of the evening. That came in the 80th minute when he threw a looping pass across his own posts to Rokocoko, sparking a 100-metre move which Spencer finished himself.
With no defenders left to beat, he slowed to a walk, crossing the dead-ball area the posts to the touchline. Spencer, sporting a bleach-blonde, Mohican-style streak in his hair, eventually dotted down out wide, before flipping a middle-fingered salute towards Crusaders supporters and nailing the conversion. In that order.
Although his skills regularly seemed ethereal, very human hiccups occurred. Spencer kicked 12 points in the 2003 Super 12 final, but had also produced a comical blunder. David Gibson's simple pass slipped from his grasp to allow hooker Mark Hammett a second try.
As New Zealand's starter at Rugby World Cup 2003, a through-the-legs flip to Rokocoko bamboozled South Africa in the quarter-final.
A week later, in the semifinal against Australia, Spencer swung a pass towards Leon MacDonald. Stirling Mortlock plucked it and charged away. The Wallabies eventually whacked New Zealand 22-10. That Australia team made fantastic villains. I will never, ever forget the full-time cigar salute performed by George Gregan and Toutai Kefu as the 2001 British and Irish Lions were vanquished.
The Blues' 2004 campaign ultimately fizzled out a point short of the playoffs. Spencer terrorised England that June but could not resist the rise of Dan Carter and made his last appearance for the All Blacks in another loss to Australia in August. I was hooked, though.
That autumn, I turned up to a school training session wearing a black shirt with the collar inside out. My sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, revealing a home-drawn Maori 'tattoo' in homage to Spencer.
Was such giddy hero-worship still acceptable at the age of 14? Unsure, I passed it off as a joke, but was definitely not laughing after being shifted from scrum-half to fly-half for a national cup tie. Our team aspired to reaching the final at Twickenham. We were soundly beaten. I had a stinker. My opposite number scored a hat-trick. Wearing 10 was not as easy as Spencer made it look.
In 2005, after defeating the Lions with New Zealand Maori, he joined Northampton. Thrillingly, a school teammate was part of the Saints Academy and revealed that the star signing drove a motorbike to training in cream, shin-high leather boots.
Years later, a colleague at Wimbledon RFC told a story of watching from the stands while recovering from a knee operation as his Esher team lost 74-10 to Northampton in National One. Spencer sauntered off the bench with half an hour remaining.
Ironically, my only meeting with Spencer came at one of the dullest games I have ever attended. Leicester Tigers edged past Northampton 15-10 at Franklin's Gardens in October 2006, courtesy of five Andy Goode penalties.
An injured Spencer was knocking around. Friends collared him for a photograph and I snuck an individual shot, but was too nervous to emit anything more than a mumble in his presence.
Short spells at Gloucester and Lions in South Africa foreshadowed Spencer's move into coaching. A passion for boxing has helped keep the 44 year-old in immaculate shape. That much was obvious from the splurge of lockdown trick-shot videos shared from the TikTok account of his son, Payton, recently.
The pair aim reverse-passes, chips and grubbers towards different targets – wheelie bins and a basketball net – with mightily impressive results. Father's dink with the outside of the right sneaker, which swishes through the hoop satisfyingly, was my favourite...
...until son struck a perfect banana kick around a turn in the road and into a bin from around 30 metres.
Killjoys can easily rubbish these sorts of clips, and indeed any unconventional or flashy training methods, with the argument that such skills do not (or, worse, should not) make an appearance in matches. Spencer's career, dotted with fragile moments but immensely entertaining, illustrates otherwise.
He clearly takes the trick-shot challenges very seriously and an over-head kick that rattled into his backyard basketball net – at the third attempt, while wearing a flip-flop on his left foot – closely resembled the one he unfurled for Northampton against hapless Saracens in February 2006.
After that game 14 years ago, which Spencer's team won 58-17, Saints coach Paul Grayson said this: "I've tried some of the things Carlos pulled off out there… but only in my back garden.
"The bloke does things I've never witnessed on a rugby field. He has a freedom and a genius about him, a sense of humour he applies to his work on the pitch."
Perhaps that attitude contributed towards limiting his haul of test caps to 35. But it certainly allowed Spencer to inspire many, many more kids into his sport.
