Pacific Island players are the gift the rugby world has happily grabbed without ever really being grateful.
The All Blacks without Pasifika players would not only feel strange, but would also be nothing like the force they have been the past 20 years.
In Australian Super Rugby teams, Pasifikastars provide the backbone. Eddie Jones' England side has the brilliant Tongan Billy Vunipola providing much of their go-forward from No 8. European club rugby is studded with the best from the Pacific.
But as Pacific Rugby Players' Association chairman Hale T-Pole pointed out during the week, when it comes to a helping hand for Pasifika rugby, it's almost completely a one-way street.
T-Pole is suggesting more Pacific Islanders be allowed to play Super Rugby in New Zealand while not being available for the All Blacks.
Instead they could turn out internationally for the Pacific country they qualify for by birth or ancestry. At the moment, our Super Rugby teams are allowed only three non-New Zealand players in their squad.
It's an issue made more burning by the dirty little secret that many European clubs put huge pressure on their Pasifika players to turn down the chance to play for Samoa, Tonga or Fiji.
Before the World Cup last year, Samoan coach Steve Jackson spoke of the pressure French clubs were putting on Samoan players to stay away from Japan.
"What happens is that you're tearing a player between their club and their country," he said. "It's just not fair on the players to make those decisions.
"We'd love to have them here, but there are certain players who won't be coming, purely because of those reasons. The clubs don't say they do it, but they do."
Samoa's captain at the Cup, Jack Lam, said when he looked at club contracts in France, a condition was "that I had to turn down the World Cup, and the opportunity to play for Samoa in the future as well".
Samoa captain Jack Lam. Photo / Photosport
Lam took the decision to put country first, potentially at great financial risk to himself. Keep in mind that all European clubs are privately owned, so owners can freely operate like dictators with a private fiefdom. Just ask Julian Savea about Toulon, whose owner Mourad Boudjellal savaged him in public, saying he "wanted a DNA test" to prove the Savea playing for the club was actually the Savea he'd signed.
There's plenty wrong with Super Rugby, but because overall control rests with New Zealand Rugby officials, not with comic book magnates, there is usually a desire to do the best thing by the game.
Allowing more Pasifika internationals to ply their trade here, where T-Pole says they feel more at home than in Europe, feels like a win-win situation.
It would make it much easier for Pacific national sides to organise themselves, improving international rugby.
And at a time when fans are lamenting the absence of All Blacks in Super Rugby, allowing more Pasifika stars into the competition would surely give an exciting shot in the arm to a competition that can always do with it.
The death of All Black Terry Lineen this week jogged some of my warmest childhood memories.
Watching his four seasons from 1957 as a brilliant All Blacks second-five made me a fan for life.
I saw him play live twice, once for Auckland against Waikato in Hamilton, and in the first test my father ever took me to, at Eden Park against the Lions in 1959, but saw highlights of all his 12 tests in black and white Caltex newsreels at the Waihi Beach movie theatre.
Terry Lineen (left) with Wilson Whineray and the Ranfurly Shield in 1959. Photo / Herald Archive
He was fast and daring, and, with all due respect to the men in black he played with, Lineen was the only one dashing enough, with his mop of jet black hair and film star looks, who would not have looked out of place on the set of a Hollywood adventure movie.
He also inspired a wonderful heartfelt story about All Blacks fandom, recorded by John Clarke aka Fred Dagg in 2009 book My Sports Hero, compiled by Wynne Gray.
Clarke recalled: "In Palmerston North in the winter of 1959, I sat down and wrote to an All Black. I was 10 years old and the letter was in my best handwriting.
"The letter was to Terry Lineen, the All Black second five eight, who could float through gaps which he identified using radar.
"Terry Lineen wrote back to me.
"The letter thanked me, encouraged me and thought perhaps I might be interested in the signatures of the All Blacks who played in the third test against the Lions (which we won 22-8). These were all on a separate sheet. Each player was named and each had signed next to his name.
"I still feel good about this letter.
"When Fred Dagg first appeared on television in the 1970s, he got letters from kids all over New Zealand. Every kid who wrote to Fred Dagg received a reply. The reason Fred wrote back to all these kids is that Terry Lineen wrote back to me."
