Paul Thomas: Too late to sing blues for Carlos

It's a little sad but not altogether surprising that having embarked on this season with the ambition of chalking up 100 games for both the Blues and Auckland, Carlos Spencer is now poised to walk away from the province without achieving either milestone.

And it's not altogether surprising that this drama looks like petering out rather than ending with a bang. Hopefully Spencer will get to strut the stage at least once more; it would be a shame if the last rabbit out of the hat was the flit to England to put the finishing touches on his exit strategy while his team-mates were doing it tough in South Africa.

Spencer's critics, a non-exclusive club whose membership could almost double as the electoral roll, may privately derive some grim satisfaction from his failure to achieve these milestones. They testify to qualities like pride, consistency, character and loyalty which his detractors prefer to associate with warriors like Justin Marshall and Tana Umaga.

But the figures speak for themselves, as does the fact that while Spencer may now be taking the hard-currency option, he has twice opted to stay with Auckland and the Blues for less money than he was being offered to go overseas.

Spencer has had a heavy cross to bear and one assumes he's simply got sick of lugging it around. His misfortune is that he personifies one side of a perennial rugby argument and stands for almost everything that's guaranteed to get a certain sort of rugby follower's goat.

Indians argue over whether the batsman who goes in at the fall of the first wicket should be a dasher or a barn door; Kiwis argue over whether the first-five should control a game or ignite it.

The reputation for flakiness which has clung to Spencer like cigarette smoke also dogged fellow free spirits Neil Wolfe, Mac Herewini and Frano Botica. And when the argument is made flesh in an enduring rivalry such as those involving Botica and Grant Fox or Spencer and Andrew Mehrtens, the debate heats up and the criticism gets personal.

Like John Kirwan before him, Spencer is the meat in the sandwich between those who have fixed ideas on what an All Black should look like and how he should conduct himself and those who are prepared to cut these young men some slack.

You and I might feel that if a bloke wants to get a silly haircut or a look-at-me tattoo, that's between him and his partner. Others take the view that when you become an All Black, you should purge yourself of all expressions of individuality, whether that means chip-kicking inside your own 22 or putting highlights in your hair.

At its most extreme, this tendency would see an All Black team that has somehow been quarantined from professionalism, multiculturalism and the 21st century, with players taking their fashion lead from the RSA and their social attitudes from Destiny Church. King Canute would have had some succinct advice for those who expect leading rugby players to be immune to the trends and fads that sweep through our image-crazed youth like viruses.

Spencer has also become a hate figure for the anti-Auckland brigade. There's a certain irony in a small-town Maori boy being regarded as the epitome of big-city swagger, but that only reinforces the fact that deep-seated and irrational forces are at work here. This is about the heartland's suspicion of self-confident individualism.

As is often the case with the controversies that wrack our national game, all roads lead to Canterbury. Spencer's certainly not the first star from up north to cop it from the red and black fans: Don Clarke used to get the treatment, as did Zinzan Brooke, and who can forget the hostility directed at Mark Carter on what should have been the special occasion of his first international start in seven years?

In his autobiography, Norm Hewitt put it this way: "If The Jerry Springer Show is ever looking for any foul-mouthed screamers, they should trawl the terraces down at Jade Stadium."

The biggest single strand in Spencer's web of misfortune is that his career has coincided with that of Canterbury's favourite son, Andrew Mehrtens. While there's much to admire about the Canterbury rugby culture, there's a dark side to it which shows itself whenever a local hero's big rival hits town.

Well, this singular talent will soon be lost to us and it could be some time before we see his like again. If Spencer's off because he feels he gets picked on for being different, that might indicate preciousness. But it's taken him a decade to reach saturation point, which suggests he could teach his detractors a thing or two about tolerance.