Aaron Smith has allowed himself to soak in all the emotion and festivities around his final home game for the Highlanders last night where he got to farewell Dunedin as a winner.
Smith watched on from the sidelines after being replaced late against the Queensland Reds and looked set to have his sendoff rained on by the visitors until some late magic from his replacement Folau Fakatava stole a 35-30 win, keeping their season alive in the process.
Speaking after the match, Smith told Newshub he had warned teammates after making his way to the sidelines that there was still more to the script and Fakatava would be the one to write it.
"I said to the boys with about 10 to go that if they get caught napping, Folau will see it," Smith said.
"One on one on the blind, don't give that to Folau Fakatava - it's over."
Sure enough, that's exactly what happened with Fakatava selling a lie by looking back to his left before taking the ball himself and running right, selling a dummy pass and sprinting to the right corner to score the crucial five-pointer.
The try was immediately picked up all around the rugby world with it being viewed as a passing-of-the-torch moment from the departing Smith to his understudy in Fakatava.
Smith has helped nurture Fakatava from a raw talent that joined them from Tonga via the Hawke's Bay to becoming an All Blacks No.9 with the 23-year-old playing off the bench behind his mentor for the past four seasons.
Smith told 1News earlier this week he had to convince Fakatava to stay with the Highlanders.
"Last year when there was a lot of talk about him leaving, I said to him, 'hey, we can both make the All Blacks here. You don't have to go'," Smith recalled.
"And I was right - we both made the All Blacks last year so I was happy that happened for him.
"But I also said to him, 'you don't have to have the challenge and the burden of [taking over from me] - just be you' and Folau Fakatava is amazing.
"He's the future of our club."
The Highlanders paid tribute to Smith after the match with a presentation on the pitch which included a haka for their club talisman ahead of his departure to Japanese rugby next season following this year's World Cup.
It capped off a long week for Smith who was happy to speak to media throughout most of it outside of trainings about his final games as one of the Deep South's finest.
“I love nothing more than this. I always hate when the game ends, I always hate when I get subbed, and I’ve always wanted to leave on my own terms – still performing," he said after the match.
"I didn’t want to have that feeling of when you get shuffled out. I feel like this year’s the right time for me. Who knows what the future holds? All I wanted was that win, and we got it.”
The Highlanders now turn their attention to the Blues in Auckland next week for their final regular season game where they will be looking to cling on to their top-eight spot and keep Smith's final season with them alive.
Smith knows though that they still need some results to go their way and they need to improve for the showdown at Eden Park.
“We’ve got to be realistic about where we’re at as a team. There were some pretty soft tries, we’re still not executing that well and we’re still having brain farts so we’ve got a lot of things we need to clean up,” he said.
“That’s by no means a dominating performance, but we won and that’s the thing. You don’t turn up Monday like ‘oh we did so well but we lost.’ We turn up, we didn’t play very well but we won.
"We just have to take that for what it is – and there’s nothing like going up to Eden Park. I’m already excited about it and I’m pretty happy this week’s nearly over. It’s been pretty big, so I’ll sleep well.”
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