SA rugby legend could have played his last match for the Stormers

The 40-year-old prop first ran out for the Western Province in 2006 and has been plying his trade in the front row ever since, earning 428 senior rugby caps in that time. Incredibly, this amounts to over 10 000 minutes of high-profile rugby.

Harris - who had already announced that this would be his final season - came off the bench as the Stormers were demolishing the Italians on Saturday night.

He went down in a heap following a scrum and refused the medical cart that came on, walking off the field under his own steam.

Stormers' director of rugby John Dobson revealed the impact Harris' injury and potential premature retirement had on the changeroom.

“It's an emotional one, to be honest,”  a distraught John Dobson told the press.

"You could see [the emotion] from Brokkie's and the players' point of view. We were all very sad. He's an unbelievable human being and we planned everything around the Cardiff game. That would've been his last of his 200-odd [games]. I just didn't want him to finish like this.

"In the sands of time, for him to not play the last game against Cardiff would be a speck of sand compared to the rock of work he's done for this union.

"It's tough tonight. We are all emotional, but there are worse things in the world. But in the greater picture, it's not how we wanted him to finish.

"It actually puts us under a lot of pressure in terms of our roster with our tighthead injuries."

To expand on Dobson's final point, the Cape Town franchise is already down two superstar props in Springbok legend Frans Malherbe (back injury) and the suspended Neethling Fouche.